Imagine that Billy from The Family Circus was all grown up and has become an engineer. From time to time he still reverts back to his habit of drawing where he’s visited around the neighborhood. Machines In Motion, by Tom Jackson with illustrations by Chris Mould has moments that will remind cartoon fans of his exploits, but at a much more educational level. Think of a vehicle that moves people and it’s covered in this book to some extent. It’s a big, over sized book that will grab upper elementary through middle school readers by the hand and make them want to learn about transportation.
It is The Amazing History of Transportation, Machines In Motion, that’s a lot to promise in a book and it does everything it can to deliver on that. The book is organized by the modes of transportation, starting at trains, ending at spacecraft and covering everything in-between.
Each mode of transportation starts with two pages of art that present a brief, illustrated history of its journey. With Trains we learn that Wagonways were built in the 1500s in Germany, had the first passenger railway in 1825, the Maglev trains in China or Japan and more. The pictures are laid out with the transportation resembling Billy’s line, but on a much more sophisticated level. The timeline is an overview and the next two pages provide a couple of paragraphs about the key moments in the transportation.
Even older readers will learn something. The Wagonways resembled more of a wooden road than a railroad. Picture thick wooden planks with carts or wagons being pulled over them by horses and you’ve got an idea. Obviously, this wasn’t a smooth journey, so much so that the horses that pulled the cargo were called pit ponies.
Machines In Motion has a great combination of art that compliments the text. The illustrations by Mould will remind Mad magazine fans of Sergio Aragones’ work. That’s partially due to its intricate nature and how incredibly detailed it is in even the smallest of areas.
The text in Machines in Motion will be OK for some middle elementary school readers to understand. Outside of that, it’s a home run for ages 10-14 as a vehicle to learn more about transportation or machines. It offers something for anyone aged 8 and up anything to learn. For example, our 10 year old loves reading the Weird But True book series now. This book has hundreds of facts like those that are presented in sentence or short paragraph form. If you have a discovery or technology minded kid then they’ll be dazzling you with information about the 1852 dirigible, the 1775 turtle and more before you know it.
There are affiliate links in this post, because, transportation.
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
GooglePlus
Youtube