Lee Christiansen

"This is New York City."
But a modern view of skyscrapers gives way to the smaller buildings and cobblestone streets of 175 years ago...to the houses of New Amsterdam 350 years ago...to the Lenape people hunting in forests 400 years ago...to a woolly mammoth wandering rocky hills 15,000 years ago...and back, and back, and back, through the time of the dinosaurs, to 540 million years ago.
"Things change....the earth changes....Our world - and the way we live in it - will continue changing."

This is an awesome, fun book for children. On every page spread,it illustrates what the city of New York was in different eras. This is an informational text that has all the whimsy and color of a fiction text. Also, because the text gives very base information as to "what happened on this spot" years ago, it lives much to a child's imagination. As a social studies text I believe a lot can be derived from the pictures as well as from the words. I believe it may be a good text to use in upper show more grades and have them deconstruct the meanings. Issues of diversity in people are not explored much in the text because much of it focuses on times before animals. I think it makes a great exploratory text for beginning discussion in eras in social studies. show less

Lots of text, but I liked how it showed the way the same spot has changed dramatically over the years.

Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. This picture book is a great way to introduce the sweep of history and the drama of geological change. Exciting words and double-page artwork celebrate New York City now. Turn the pages and there's always surprise: 350 years ago fewer than 1,500 people lived in what was then called New Amsterdam, but 18 different languages echoed through the streets; 400 years ago, the Lenapes hunted on a trail that later became a street named Broadway. Then the leaps back show more in time become huge--190 million years, to the age of the dinosaurs; then to cataclysmic geological upheavals, including volcanoes, mountains, oceans; and finally, only rock. Hazel Rochman show less