Timothy's Five-City Tour

Grade 1-4?A weak effort at best. The garishly colored cover illustration shows a group of animal youngsters (who might easily be mistaken for aliens), with instruments in hand, taking off on a 21-day school band tour from Boston to Washington, DC. The antics and behavior of the students preclude any possibility of Timothy and his friends having an "educational journey, learning many fascinating things about five of the largest cities in the United States." In his postcards home, the young trumpet player claims he doesn't understand why "people threw some tea off the ship into the water" in Boston or why "they keep a bell that won't ring" in Philadelphia. The lack of a map pinpointing the tour's progress and the uninspired stylized cartoon drawings add to the disappointment. Vera B. Williams' Stringbean's Trip to the Shining Sea (Greenwillow, 1988), Loreen Leedy's Postcards from Pluto (Holiday House, 1993), and Lynne Cherry's The Armadillo from Amarillo (Harcourt, 1994) are all more satisfying reading journeys that feature letters or postcards.
Gale W. Sherman, Pocatello Public Library, ID
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