Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

A girl explains maps, beginning with her bedroom and expanding to a map of the world. """"Sweeney encourages the cartographer in every child,"""" said PW. Ages 4-8. (July)

School Library Journal

Gr 1-2--A nameless child introduces the world of cartography. Using the premise that simple drawings can be maps, the book begins with crayon drawings of the floor plans of the girl's room and house. The concept becomes progressively more complex, as her horizons expand from home to street, to town, to state, to country, and finally to the world. Colorful illustrations show a composite of the entire area that is being charted on the facing page. On each successive page, the child points out her street, hometown, state, and country. The process then reverses as she finds the U.S. on a world map and works back down the scale to her own room again. The text concludes with the statement that "...everybody has their own special place on the map." Not an essential purchase, but one that could be useful for teaching basic skills at the primary level.--Eldon Younce, Harper Elementary School, KS

ALA Booklist

A small girl introduces the concept of maps, beginning in her own room, then reaching further out to her house, street, town, country, and the globe, and back again, step by step, to herself at home. It's a game kids love to play. The collagelike illustrations show each place and then the child pointing to a diagram of that scene. We see her in her room, then she makes a crayon picture, a map of that room. Then we see her making a map of her house and her street. For her town, country, and globe, there's a scenic painting, and then we see her pointing to a map and where she is on it. Like Cohen's Where's the Fly? the pictures play with scale and perspective and help children expand their personal address. (Reviewed April 1, 1996)

Horn Book

A girl describes herself and her surroundings, along with maps of her room, house, street, town, state (Kansas), country, and the earth. The illustrations are executed in colored pencil with occasional watercolor and airbrush. Older children who understand how maps correspond to the real world will enjoy examining and comparing the illustrations of actual places with the maps.