The Shape of Things: How Mapmakers Picture Our World

Despite detailed, documentary-style illustrations by Tavares (Hoops) and eloquent prose by Robbins (The Fastest Drummer), this work offers a spotty account of how landscape-related knowledge came to be represented visually and at scale. Beginning in prehistory, the creators imagine a family recording the valley landscape they see from an enclosed rock ledge: “Mother drew dots on a cave wall. Father etched grooves into a mammoth tusk.” The survey next jumps to ancient Greeks’ speculations about Earth’s shape (positing it as rectangular, disklike, cylindrical, or spherical), then notes how “Native Americans created maps with rocks,” Egyptians painted on papyrus, Chinese mapmakers utilized wood, and Polynesians used shells and sticks. When covering how, “much later, European explorers traveled by land and sea to chart our planet... and proved that it was round,” the text elides matters of colonialism, instead focusing on refinements of accuracy and detail. Spreads return several times to the original valley landscape, which slowly becomes covered with buildings while surveyors stand in the foreground. Though several instruments are named (a compass, a Gunter’s chain, a theodolite), their workings are not explained; back matter instead examines instruments used by contemporary surveyors and cartographers. Human figures are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Marietta Zacker, Gallt & Zacker Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary. (Aug.)