Building a house

You could almost, watching, do it yourself--by carefully noting the steps depicted in each bright, brisk, clearly delineated picture. There's a strategy here: of breaking down the process of building a frame, Cape Cod-type house into distinct, visually-related steps (""A cement mixer pours cement""; ""Bricklayers lay large white blocks""); of keeping the verbal information to a minimum, and illustrating the process in its entirety (the cement mixer is pouring the cement into a wooden frame, to form the building's foundation). The workmen are the principals here, abetted by their machinery and hand tools, just as they were in the early Lenski books: ""Carpenters put in windows and doors""; ""Painters paint inside and out."" But, at the start and the close, come those few words that make a house a home: ""On a green hill"" is where the building goes up; and when ""The house is built"" (and a moving van is in sight), ""The family moves inside."" With independently interesting pictures (where does a bricklayer keep his bricks as he builds a chimney? how does a roofer keep his shingles on a sloping roof?) and, exceptionally for demonstrations of this sort, a definite, sunny personality, a very fine piece of work indeed. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.