City Atlas: Travel the World with 30 City Maps

K-Gr 3—This effort highlights 30 international cities. Each spread offers a sidebar listing the city name, population, language spoken, country, and country's flag along with a short summary. Readers are greeted with a local salutation for each place: "Merhaba," says a girl from Istanbul, while New Yorkers say, "Hi, there!" and Chicagoans say, "Hello." These aren't really maps per se—waterways are named, but streets are not; there is no scale; the divisions between city and country are not clear or often missing; and the coverage is spotty. For instance, the New York spread does not name Staten Island, Queens, or the Bronx (a sliver of Brooklyn is labeled). The distribution of the cities featured is largely uneven—most of the maps are European or North American, and there is only one map representing Africa. The appeal is in the folksy and colorful illustrations of each location's top sites. In the Budapest spread, right next to a portrait of Stephen I on a horse is an ice-skating penguin ("Get your skates on at the city park ice rink"), along with the Hungarian Parliament Building, and much more. Lacking an index, this is suitable for browsing only.