Occasionally we’re sent books which are absolutely perfect with H’s development and interests. Big City Explorer is one of those. Maggie Li who illustrates it is also the Art Director of one of our favourite magazines, Okido!
Big City Explorer is a different kind of book. A journey around the world, visiting 28 different cities.
Each double page is dedicated to a city around the world and is beautifully illustrated. Being the global traveller H is, she has an interest in the world, especially due to her dual nationality. She has found facts about cities we’ve stopped by and enjoyed learning about them (including that Singapore isn’t just a city, it’s actually a small country). There’s information like currency, language and population as well as lots of pictures, interesting buildings and places.
Facts are broken down into a readable style which makes learning interesting, plus the illustrations are lovely and clear. For Christmas we’ve bought H the wonderful Maps book by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski and this is a great accompaniment.
What makes this book really unique is the compass. It needs to be removed from the front cover, then on most pages you’re told which direction to point it in for the next page – for example, from Sydney to Tokyo ‘set your compass to north’ – simple enough directions to help a child learn directions. At the end of the book is a Super City Match Up game, where you can identify buildings that you’ll have come across throughout the book as well.
On the contents page of Big City Explorer everything is colour coded into continents as well which helps with learning where cities are in the world. Maggie Li’s illustrations capture the spirit of each city, and H has enjoyed learning about different places around the world.
If your child has an interest in cities of the world, this would make a fabulous present. If your child loves Okido magazine, you definitely need this book! Big City Explorer is published by Pavilion Books, and retails for £11.99.
We were sent Big City Explorer by Maggie Li for the purpose of review, all opinions are our own. The jpeg at the end links to Amazon via an affiliate link.