TIN LIZZIE

Bolstered by teeming galleries of cars old and new, Drummond both pays tribute to Henry Ford’s Model T (a century old this year) and issues a challenge to readers. Young Eliza recalls her auto-mechanic grandpa’s constant refrain—“You gotta have wheels!”—as she grows up helping him to restore his prized Tin Lizzie. When at long last it’s ready to go out for a spin, Eliza and her younger sibs see the crowded highways (“So many roads, and bridges, and tunnels! And so much pollution. And so many millions of cars…”) and begin to toss around ways of coping with these problems. Drummond fills even the endpapers with small, lively ink-and-watercolor sketches, depicting at the beginning a swift history of the automobile and at the end, a page of “Problems” and a facing page of “Solutions.” In the end, Grandpa cavalierly (but with perfect truth) notes, “I guess you’ll work it out. You’ve got to—it’s your future!” This frank appraisal of the auto’s appeal, and its ultimate cost, will definitely set children to thinking. (Picture book. 6-10)