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CM . . . . Volume XXIII Number 14 . . . . December 9, 2016
This little book has been published by Rock's Mills Press, an independent Ontario publisher with a self-described mission to publish "books that matter", many of these being adult non-fiction on Canadian historical subjects. My Car Can Take Me Far has the feel of a self-published work. It is a small, square paperback featuring the same two characters (mother and son?) travelling to a variety of places in a little blue car and eventually ending up back in their garage where they express that old sentiment that getting around is nice, but home is, after all, best. The illustrations are bright computer-generated art, with foreground figures decisively outlined in black and slightly more fuzzy backdrops showing city streets, freeways, fields and mountains. The human faces are simplified (eyes and mouths only – no noses) with unwaveringly cheerful expressions. Each scene is described in two lines of doggerel verse, some of which scans and rhymes and some of which does not. For example:
Or:
My Car Can Take Me Far is Escalante's second book and animation artist Berardo's first. Libraries and schools can do much better with their budgets – even though no price is actually indicated on the book. Not Recommended. Ellen Heaney is a retired children's librarian living in Coquitlam, BC.
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