A City Through Time

A City Through Time
Published by DK Canada

About the book

In the bestselling A City Through Time, readers are invited to follow the progress of an imaginary city through six key periods of time, each captured by a scene of the city and zooming in on key buildings like a Roman bathhouse, medieval castle, and a modern skyscraper. Illustrations by award-winning artist Steve Noon provide a unique history of city life, transporting readers from an early Greek settlement to an industrial metropolis, while pull-outs surrounding the illustrations introduce the reader to the people who lived there, from Greek slaves to modern-day commuters.

New to this edition is a photographic section exploring amazing real-life cities — from ancient Babylon to Constantinople to 21st-century Tokyo.

My Thoughts

This new title from DK Canada has been created to resemble to the book A Street Through Time that I have reviewed in the past.   Imagine a city where you can see the progress through time.  That’s what this book is about.   The first two pages, will give you a rapid eye view of the first steps of the city with stone age hunters, a camp bu the review, the first farmers. how tombs were made, the metalworkers and traders from the sea.    As soon as you turn the page you will embark on a journey through time with various illustrations of what the city looked like at various time periods.  

The first city you will discover is the Greek colony with a temple, gymnasium and so on.  Some inside can be seen because you get a cut-view out of the houses.    You can also see how the people lived and dressed during that time period.   In a way, you could use the two pages illustration as a search and find activity for your kids to find the people mentioned at the top and bottom of the pages.  As you continue to explore history through this book, you will discover a Greek temple, a Roman city, the public baths during Roman Empire, a medieval city, a castle, a palace and fountains from 1650, the town hall from 1650, an industrial port in 1880, a train station in 1880, as well as steel and glass and high-rise constructions from today’s age.

At the end of the book, you can have more historical information about architecture, technology, work, play and costume through these time periods.   You will also have information about historical cities like Ur, Thebes, Athens, Rome, Tikal, Constantinople. Chang’an, Baghdad, Delhi, London, New York and Tokyo. 

I find this book to be extremely interesting to complement your history lessons – the pages are beautifully illustrated to bring you a picture of what the city would look like in a specific time period.    Historically, it can show you and your children how people lived, dressed, what they ate and how they spend their time.  For example, in the Public Baths pages, you will learn about how the water was brought to the baths and how it could be warmed and flushed.     This book is perfect to bring with you in the car when you are travelling long distance or waiting at an appointment of some sort.  It will keep your kids busy and entertain while learning at the same time.  I find the two book somewhat complete themselves as one will illustrate a city which will give you the big picture of life during a time period while the other will show you a street which will give you a closer view of a section of the city through history. 

See some of the pages of this beautiful book.

A City Through Time is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca and amazon.com.

   

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned book for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.