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.