Every Here Has a There: Moving Cargo by Container Ship

Follow boxes of books through the supply chain, as they travel from truck to ship and then across the ocean to a bookstore (and to you)! Follow boxes of books through the supply chain, as they travel from truck to ship and then across the ocean to a bookstore (and to you)! Every here has a there, every up has a down, and every far has a near. Hop on board a big cargo ship as books printed in Asia head onto the water and toward the United States! Chock-full of fun facts and a unique overview of opposites, Every Here Has a There will fascinate and educate young readers on how their treasured books get delivered to their favorite local shelves. Also great for new readers, as its simple, engaging vocabularly offers oodles of options for spelling lists and sight words.

About the Author :
Margo Linn taught language arts in elementary schools for thirty years before embarking on a writing career. She is the author of dozens of children's books, including The Bee Box That Jack Built and The Cow That Jack Milked. She lives and works in Westchester, New York. Brian Fitzgerald is an Irish illustrator who lives in Dublin, Ireland. He is the illustrator of I Don't Want To Go To School, Be Thankful for Trees, and Ruckus on the Ranch. He loves to make prints of places he visits. www.brianfitzer.ie

Review :
A shipment of books from Hong Kong to New York City provides a focus for this exploration of cargo transport via container ship. The red-and-black hull of the ship commands attention against white or pale-gray backgrounds as it’s piled high with blue, orange, green, and gray containers. The color scheme and graphical simplicity inevitably recall Donald Crews’ Freight Train (1978), as does the ship’s unvarying left-to-right orientation and its visual dominance of nearly every single double-page spread. Linn’s text takes two forms: a simple narrative of the action depicted on the page (“Tugboats point the bow of the ship out toward the Pacific Ocean”) and two patterned statements per spread, each containing a pair of, usually, opposite terms: “Every PULL has a PUSH. Every OFF has an ON.” Most of these opposing concepts are clearly illustrated; for instance, the tugboats, tiny against the enormous ship, embody push and pull. Others invite conversation: The containers are clearly on the ship, but what is off? The ship’s four-week journey takes it through the “engineering wonder” that is the Panama Canal; its “series of canal locks” is depicted in cross-section, but it will be up to adult readers to explain exactly what locks are or how they work, since no glossary or other backup information is included. Given the ubiquity of container transport, this arresting effort is a necessary addition to things-that-go shelves. —Kirkus Reviews