C is for China by Sungwan So.



This delightful abecedarium (one of my favorite words) is a photographic tour of China from abacus to zen (which is a bit of cheat, since "Zen" is Japanese for the school of Buddhism known as "Chan" in China). Hong Kong-born Sungwan was trained to be a philosopher and anthropologist, but wound up becoming a travel photographer... and, as it turns out, a pretty good maker of children's books.

My daughter, the test reader, was enraptured with the book about as long as any book enraptures her. Currently, it's no competition for Green Eggs and Ham, but for a while, the colorful photographs of Chinese life -- traditional and modern -- were utterly compelling. Maybe if the words rhymed... oh, yeah, there are words. Every photo comes with a concise paragraph explaining what it is you're looking at, making this a pretty good glancing overview of China. That's "glancing" as in both "at a glance" and "a quick look." For instance, you can see a tiaoqi game in progress, and hey, you learn that this is a chess-like game folks play by jumping marbles.

(Then, in my case, you slowly realize that this is what we called "chinese checkers" as kids.)

(And then you do a web search and learn that some people are really into this game, while others say it's really American, then went to Germany and just caught on in China later.)

For a three-year-old, it's mildly interesting, but I have a feeling it'll be more compelling once she's a year or two older.

And maybe even better once she learns how to use Google.