The Books

A Year in the City

by Kathy Henderson
Illustrated by Paul Howard

One Potato Review

As with any good book about the seasons, this story conveys the urgency of so many wildly different attractions arriving in such rapid succession, often where we do not think to look. Especially in the city: fireworks get their due, and glorious paper lions in Chinatown, but there’s also a homeless woman acknowledged in December, and tin cans rattling in the February wind, dead branches getting sawed off healthy trees. None of this is a downer exactly, but it might not conform to a tourist’s impression of landscapes they came specifically to see. For natives, however, no less evocative are the celebrations – but also the struggles – of a city’s ability to adapt. Scenic but honest, with simple alliterative text, and right for many ages.