Picturing the city
THIS IS NEW YORK, by M. Sasek. Universe, 60 pp., $17.95.
Between 1959 and 1974, Czech-born illustrator Miroslav Sasek created a series of 18 travel books for children, illuminating locales national (Texas, Cape Kennedy) and global (Paris, Israel, Hong Kong). With the assistance of Judith Stonehill and Barbara Cohen of the late, lamented New York Bound Bookstore, This Is New York (1960), the fourth in the series, has been returned to print (as well as This Is San Francisco). Sasek focuses less on the city's tourist sites - although those are represented - than on New York's vibe - its hot dog carts and kosher meat markets, limousines and drugstore lunch counters, cops and strikers and museum dinosaurs. Admittedly, this reissue is aimed at nostalgic adults: Clothes and signs ("Pineapple From Hawaii," "Philco Radio $14.88") reflect the period, and a back page updates the book's information. One quibble: The colors in the reproductions here are a tad less bright than in the originals. But Sasek's charm - his meticulous architectural details, his whimsical citydwellers - make this a happy endnote to any library of New York books.
Text from Peter Terzian, Picturing the city, Newsday, 22 June 2003,
p.D.32.
© Newsday
