How I Learned Geography (review)

In this autobiographically rooted story, our young narrator and his parents flee a war-torn country but end up in straitened circumstances in a new land: "We slept on a dirt floor. I had no toys and no books. Worst of all: food was scarce." When the boy's father comes home one night with a map instead of bread, the boy is hungry and furious, but after his father hangs the huge map on the wall, the youngster becomes absorbed in its infinite possibilities, traveling in his daydreams far away from his miserable current existence. A tribute to the powers of wide imaginative horizons, this gains impact from its basis in Shulevitz' own experiences, which give it reality beyond mere wishful thinking. Ragged right text is clear and straightforward but vivid, and small memorable touches—such as the boy's resentment at his neighbor's loud chewing and his incantation of place names taken from the map—add dimensionality. Watercolor illustrations avoid demonizing the boy's real life: the town (Turkestan, according to Shulevitz' note) looks like an interesting place, but the family's dull patched clothes speaks to their privations and contrasts them with the teeming colorfully turbaned prior inhabitants. Chunky lines and sweeps of washy watercolor gain additional textures in the map worlds, with soft intricate details in nubbly fresco-like surfaces or cities evincing a polish and regularity of pattern in their multiwindowed skyscrapers that suggests photocollage even as the changing colors recall the traditional map hues. Use this as an entrée to a discussion of maps and geography or as a resonant reminder of the power of imagination in difficult circumstances.