People, People Everywhere

by Nancy Van Laan

Describes the effects of the nation's population growth in rhymed text and illustrations. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679810633
• ISBN13: 9780679810636
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
• Length: 1 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 9.0" x 11.2"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

A Humorous Look at the Implications of Human Busyness

Researchers constantly find that reading to children is valuable in a variety of ways, not least of which are instilling a love of reading and improved reading skills. With better parent-child bonding from reading, your child will also be more emotionally secure and able to relate better to others. Intellectual performance will expand as well. Spending time together watching television fails as a substitute. To help other parents apply this advice, as a parent of four I consulted an expert, our youngest child, and asked her to share with me her favorite books that were read to her as a young child. People, People, Everywhere! was one of her picks.It is hard for a child to realize just how large and complicated the world is. This book does a fine job of capturing all of the tasks that must be done by portraying the bundle of activity that goes on around all of us, whether we can see it from minute to minute or not. The book then does a nice job of capturing the irony of this by describing how busy humans like to get away from busy humans, and end up creating new masses of humanity in the process. This concept of how suburbs got started allows your child to see the implications of human desires over time. As a result, this book can begin to introduce concepts of cause and effect. Very nice!There is also a tag there to introduce the ecological implications, as well. The children in the new suburban town are collecting containers and trash to recycle and "Save our Earth." Getting this many important ideas into one beginning reader is an amazing accomplishment that is most impressive.The illustrations are also beautiful and fun to look at. Preschoolers can enjoy these illustrations as well as adults can.As a beginning reader, the book benefits from having the illustrations match the words rather nicely. There is also good repetition so that some words will become familiar sooner like "people" "children" "everywhere" "running" "here" "there" "going" and "playing." After you have chanted the cadences of the remorseless march of human progress in the book, I suggest that you and your child lean back and think about when busyness is good, when it isn't, and how to be in charge of busyness rather than being the victim of busyness. That may be one of the most important set of lessons that your child ever learns!Enjoy being with people at a pace that encourages joyful interaction and sharing!