THE MILESTONES PROJECT: Celebrating Childhood Around the World

The creators of The Milestones Project, an online archive of 23,000 photographs of children, from various countries, here assemble an upbeat sampling of those images. An introduction describes the mission of the project as "a comprehensive effort to document childhood experiences in places far and wide. We aim to create a more peaceful world by encouraging the recognition that, beneath our beliefs or skin color, we are all the same." The Steckels collect in these pages photos of familiar moments of childhood—losing a tooth, celebrating a birthday, beginning school—demonstrating that these international children are "part of a universal family." More than three dozen children's authors and illustrators (among them Naomi Shihab Nye, Margaret Mahy, Cynthia Rylant, Eric Carle, William Joyce—who also provides an illustration—and J.K. Rowling) share brief, heartfelt, sometimes humorous reminiscences from their early years, alongside spontaneous quotes from children. At times the text and photograph layouts are inspired, such as a checkerboard page of children's quotes about their toys, and images of various children with dolls, teddy bears and the like; other pairings may be confusing to children (e.g., a quote from a South African, paired with a photo of a child from India). What will linger longest in readers' memories are the crisply focused, beautifully reproduced full-color portraits, which—except for several revealing the anguish of getting a haircut or visiting the doctor—focus entirely on the positive. Ages 4-up. (Oct.)