All Around the Town

It's pretty well written for an alphabet book, but it's very wordy and quite dated. It's from 1948 and there's a lot of horse-drawn carts, although I'm surprised at some of the things that are in here, like E is for "escalator." I wouldn't have imagined that they would have many of those back then, but I guess they did. D is the "dairy driver," or milkman. G is for the "Good Humor man," but S is for the "subway." They're all things that are in the city. A is for "airplane." Z is for the "zoo." Just a bunch of poems, well written ones. They have good meter and good rhyme. It's really a well written book, but I don't think the kids from today would understand it. I imagine it was a great book back in the day, but today it just fizzles out.

I'd say the quality is comparable to Dr. Seuss's ABCs, but with no nonsense words. Everything's pretty straightforward, with things that kids-- of the time-- would actually encounter. Some things that kids would still encounter. But you know, there's not a lot of organ grinders nowadays. And in southern California we don't see a lot of circuses or have any subways. We have a great zoo, though. Not many umbrellas or ice skating rinks. As I said, it was probably really good in its time, but it's not as good anymore.