So Many Circles, So Many Squares

by Tana Hoban

Overview

Tana Hoban changes the way we look at the world. After you read this book, you will find yourself seeing circles and squares everywhere. And they will surprise you — because they will be where you have often looked before. You will have changed — and begun to see.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780688151652
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/23/1998
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.25(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Tana Hoban's (1917–2006) photographs have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and in galleries around the world. She has won many gold medals and prizes for her work as a photographer and filmmaker. Her books for children are known and loved internationally. 

Editorial Reviews

Okay, so this more accurately should have been titled So Many Circles, So Many Squares AND Rectangles AND Parallelograms AND Other Shapes (Such as Triangles). Who cares? It's exciting; it's challenging; it's rich (the more you look, the more you see); and it's art. Of the twenty-nine riveting photographs that implore us to look at and see shapes, some are comparatively simple (eight brightly colored buttons against a lightly lined background); most much more complex. Take the grainy, almost monochromatic picture (except for the orange handles on a pair of scissors) of an open dishwasher. First to strike the eye is the roundness of the four rows of plates. When we start to look more closely, we see the square grid pattern of the silverware basket, the vertical plastic prongs of the pull-out racks that suggest rectangles, even the rounded shape of the scissor handles. But it gets better: really close inspection reveals the wheels that the bottom rack of the dishwasher rolls out on, the round shape of the soap receptacles inside the dishwasher door, and the reflection of the square-gridded silverware holder in the door. The book is a great visual game, a great puzzle, but it's not just for brains and eyes: Hoban engages our senses (the gleam of brightly polished saxophones; the dusky, splitting skins on a bunch of red grapes; the ripeness and plenty of wall-to-wall tomatoes on the opening endpapers) and our sense of humor (kids with their heads stuck inside boxes; a polka-dotted dress hanging on the back of a garbage truck) as well. This is an extraordinary book-even for the extraordinary Tana Hoban.

Horn Book Magazine

Hoban's wordless concept book of circles and squares is graced with thrilling full-color photographs but marred by a small, rude gesture in one picture. Most of the objects pictured are of familiar man-made objects, and most come with an urban flavorþmanhole covers, construction blinkers, shop windows, storm sewer grates. Some of the photographs are quite funny—one shows a couple of kids with boxes on their heads; other photos have the quality of found objects—the back of a garbage truck, a side view of an airport luggage carrier. The caveat: A shot of traffic lights and a "One Way" sign includes a small poster of the symbol known as "the finger." Perhaps only city children will notice; aside from that, this is a tidy book, and one that puts across Hoban's undeviating message to look, and see. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews