Subway

by Christoph Niemann, Christoph Niemann (Illustrator)

Overview

Speed. Color. Sound. Numbers. Maps. Connections. Navigation. Subway systems may be specific to certain cities around the world, but the pure thrill of a subway ride is universal to all young children.

Christoph Niemann’s graphically elegant and playful picture book is a tour de force for preschoolers and a stellar addition to the canon of books about trains, trucks, planes, and automobiles.

Based on the author’s own underground adventures with his young boys—chronicled for adult readers in Niemann’s New York Times blog, Abstract City—this innovative picture book is an invitation down underground, where a system of trains and tracks delivers millions of riders to their destinations each day.

“Underneath the city is this beautifully simple system of letters, numbers, and colors. The trains and stations are huge and impressive but also comforting, because nothing ever changes. My boys are in charge; they can read the signs, navigate the grid, and they always know what happens next.”—Christoph Niemann

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062066732
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/14/2011
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
Lexile:	AD510L (what's this?)
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, author, and animator. His work has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives and appears regularly on the covers of the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. His acclaimed books for children include Words, The Pet Dragon, and Subway. Christoph Niemann lives in Berlin, Germany, with his family.

Editorial Reviews

Niemann captures this orderly world in stark colors and minimalist images featuring stick people straight out of an M.T.A. safety poster—flat, white figures with detached spherical heads—but with a decidedly humorous slant…Other subway books…follow a similar story line: a family descends into the station, observes the sights and sounds of an arriving train, takes a ride and finally exits at their home. The real fun here for young readers is Niemann's humor and respect for details.
—The New York Times

Becca Zerkin

Niemann (The Pet Dragon) navigates New York's subterranean system in this playful love letter to public transportation. Readers follow two children and their father, pictured as transit map-style stick figures, who spend a rainy day exploring routes. "Riding the A requires some patience/ if you plan to visit all forty-four stations," they advise. The trains occasionally acquire some light personification ("The 7 is on his way to meet... / his friends at Times Square, 42nd Street!"); after the F and G lines separate at Bergen Street, "The G says, 'Don't cry. I will meet you/ again at Roosevelt Avenue!"). The tone is largely celebratory-- rate hikes and construction don't come up--but Niemann finds pleasure in unexpected places, too ("There are plenty of critters on the tracks of the J/ enjoying the subway all night and all day"). His folksy gouaches are color-coded to match the various subway lines, and his pitchblack backdrops make the colors explode, while alluding to tunnel interiors. An abundance of droll details will delight regular straphangers and stir the imaginations of transportation-obsessed children. Ages 2-5. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Distinctively urban and bold…train lovers everywhere will enjoy this picture-book ride.” — ALA Booklist

“This artistic tour de force will appeal to New Yorkers and visitors alike.” — Kirkus Reviews

“An abundance of droll details will delight regular straphangers and stir the imaginations of transportation-obsessed children.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A sure hit with most youngsters, especially those who are transfixed by trains.” — School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Distinctively urban and bold…train lovers everywhere will enjoy this picture-book ride.

ALA Booklist

PreS-Gr 1—This colorful, vivacious, child-centered title began with a post on Niemann's blog, Abstract City, in which he describes a day of riding the subway with his two sons just for fun. The artist uses thick gouache paint to render his characters as standard pictograms, akin to those on city signs, with curved edges for hands and feet, and the technique creates a chalky texture that looks like correction fluid. Visual communication lords over the text. Niemann uses many tropes for expression: the youngsters, excited to spend the rainy day on the subway, hi-five. The agony of the adventure coming to an end is punctuated with tears bursting from one son and father dragging the other one, boneless. The spreads of the dedication page, the A train and all its 44 stops, and the wild crisscrossing array of colored lines under Times Square mirroring the famed city lights on the surface, capture the glory of this venerable transportation system. The rhyming text and references to subway lore add chuckles for older readers, but the meter does create an occasional stumble. A sure hit with most youngsters, especially those who are transfixed by trains.—Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City

School Library Journal

"It's cold and wet. What can be done? / A trip on the subway, just for fun!" A father and his two children run down into the New York subway to ride the rails and explore the trains all day long. Every line is represented as the family hops from track to track. Set on stark, black backgrounds with free-flowing brush strokes, the trains swoop and turn on ribbons of appropriately colored paths. And when many of the lines converge in the middle of the book, aptly at Times Square, they tangle like spaghetti strings. After a full day of fun, the children climb out, ready for subway dreams at night. In a witty visual twist, the humans appear as traffic-sign-style white pictograms, with round heads floating over stick bodies (and occasionally attired to suit the text). Inspired by Niemann's clever New York Times blog, "Abstract City," this artistic tour de force will appeal to New Yorkers and visitors alike. Eagle-eyed enthusiasts will carefully plot every stop, spotting subway humor along the way. That the meter occasionally strains is the only false step on this fresh, striking subway tour. (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews