Away from Home

Rating:
Summary: A nice journey, but a few disturbing questions...
Review: My 10 month old son really enjoys this book. The format is nice, with large pages, little writing and great pictures. I bought it because I want him to be exposed to many parts of the world and its people. But a few things trouble me: 1) Why are only the boys traveling to the exotic places and the little girls just sit in the audience? 2)Why are there no locations in Africa? There is good diversity of the little boys and girls, but it seems the places could have been a little more representative of the globe. I think Ms. Lobel could have lost Tulsa and substituted Timbuktu. 3) The letter C is very disturbing - "Craig crawled in Cracow". And Craig has a Star of David on his hat. What are we to think of this? Is this implying that Jews should be crawling? Or is it some sort of not-so-subtle historical reference with no context within which to interpret it? I find it a little out of place in a childs book. Let us worry about explaining man's inhumanity to man when the kids are a little older please.

In summary, a nice book, but I really have trouble getting past these items.