What's That Building?: An Architectural Guessing Game

by Rebecca Donnelly, Jocelyn Cho (Artist)

Overview

A playful introduction to design and architecture with cutaway scenes of ten buildings, featuring an interactive guessing game and search-and-find

In this interactive first book of architecture, children discover how architects design everyday buildings, from planetariums, aquariums, and airports to supermarkets and shopping malls, so that they best meet their users’ needs. Set up as a guessing game, the book presents clues that invite readers to guess which type of building is needed in 10 different scenarios. For example, what building do you need for students, teachers, and learning about science, history, and art? A school! Children continue the fun by looking for the hidden architect on each spread.

Answers are provided in dramatic cutaway reveals that are jam-packed with details that children will delight in. Each building is accompanied by informative yet whimsical text that explains its architectural and design features.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781837290321
Publisher:	Phaidon Press
Publication date:	10/08/2025
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	10.30(w) x 12.75(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Rebecca Donnelly is the author of more than 30 children’s books, including the Indies Introduce/Kids’ Indie Next pick How to Stage a Catastrophe. Her nonfiction book Total Garbage: A Messy Dive into Trash, Waste, and Our World was a School Library Journal Best Book of 2023.

Jocelyn Cho is a San Francisco-based illustrator whose work spans a diverse range of publications, including school textbooks, fiction book covers, and magazines such as The Hollywood Reporter. This is her debut children’s book.

Editorial Reviews

‘A treat for Where’s Waldo fans as well as an eye-opener for budding architects.’ – Kirkus

From the Publisher

2025-08-16
Cutaway views teeming with tiny figures invite viewers to peer into 10 specialized types of building, from airport to aquarium.

Aiming to get readers thinking like architects and imbued with the fundamental principle that form follows function, Donnelly tallies basic requirements for a collection of buildings that Cho incorporates into a series of compelling and absorbing cutaway views. A school, for instance, should ideally have both learning and office spaces with easy access between floors, locations for eating and physical activity, and places to store supplies—all of which can be picked out in the spread-filling illustration that follows. Other structures, from shopping mall and museum to bakery, planetarium, and veterinary clinic, require distinctive mixes of similar and unique features. Cho sometimes skips essentials like restrooms and HVAC systems, although the omission is hardly noticeable. Her busy, finely detailed spaces are filled to the brim with bustling, individually drawn users who not only encompass a great range of ages, races, body types, and dress, but also include an “architect” whom viewers are invited to spot in each scene, as well as the occasional disguised animal or space alien.

A treat for Where’s Waldo fans as well as an eye-opener for budding architects. (glossary)(Informational picture book. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews