The High Street

by Alice Melvin

Overview

Sally has a list of ten items she needs to buy. Open the flaps to see inside the shops, where unusual things are going on. Should those wild animals be upstairs in the pet shop? Will the plates fall off the wall in Mr. Cooper’s China Shop? Can Sally find everything on her list? Children will pore over this charmingly illustrated interactive book to find out.

Each shop is depicted in Alice Melvin’s trademark highly detailed illustrations that both evoke a previous age and yet remain strongly contemporary. Rhyming text and repetition of Sally’s shopping list make this book perfect for reading aloud.

Praise for The High Street
“A satisfyingly unique ending. The inventive format and crisp retro details will put this at the top of every curious little girl’s reading list.”
–School Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781854379436
Publisher:	Tate Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2011
Edition description:	includes 20 gatefolds
Pages:	52
Sales rank:	278,151
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 10.60(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Alice Melvin is a highly acclaimed young artist and designer based in Edinburgh and the author and illustrator of Counting Birds and An A-Z Treasure Hunt. She has won a Booktrust Best New Illustrator Award, and Counting Birds was named a Scottish Book Trust Book of the Month.

Editorial Reviews

Sally, a girl who carries a shopping basket and wears a red A-line jumper, needs to pick up 10 specific items from the High Street, including a yellow rose, a bunch of grapes, and a tin kazoo. Readers can assist her in finding the objects by lifting full-page flaps that reveal the interiors of the High Street's shops. At each location, Sally walks away with one of the items from her list. At Mr Botton's bakery, there's "no cockatoo,/ no tin kazoo,/ no Persian rug,/ no stripy jug,/ but a cherry tart!" Sally finds a Persian rug at Ms Yoshiko's antiques shop, roller skates at Mr Crispin's toyshop, and a bunch of grapes at the greengrocer's, but still no yellow rose. Scottish author and artist Melvin (Counting Birds) fills her matte pages with ornamental pen-and-ink details, paying special care to brick inlay, awnings, arches, wallpaper, and fabric patterns. Surprises are nestled within every page (a puppet show, a brass trio), with the final one being a message: the most treasured gifts of all may not always be on the list. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 3—In this Scottish cumulative tale, Sally wanders along High Street as she tries to check off items from her shopping list. Each storefront folds out to reveal a fascinating array of merchandise within, begging readers to pore over the delicious details. The girl makes her way from a bakery to a china shop, and from a green grocer's to a hardware store, all the while exposing readers to some interesting vocabulary. The music shop has bagpipes and bassoons while the pet store has hamsters that bustle and rabbits that rustle. The cross sections of each shop will intrigue young readers while the rhyme scheme will help them gain confidence when they correctly guess what Sally finds next. After she fails to find her last item, she "trudges home on heavy, aching feet, towards the public gardens on the corner of the street…." What she discovers there gives this tale a satisfyingly unique ending. The inventive format and crisp retro details will put this at the top of every curious little girl's reading list.—Jenna Boles, Washington-Centerville Public Library, OH

School Library Journal