L.A. Bedtime Story

Even from the far-flung territory of Minnesota, illustrator Elisa Kleven gets mail. “I got a card from someone that read, ‘I didn’t know there was that much in Los Angeles,’ ” says Kleven. “People who don’t live here have a stereotype about it.”

She is referring to “City of Angels: In and Around Los Angeles” (Dutton Children’s Books), a recently published picture book she illustrated, with text by Julie Jaskol and Brian Lewis. It’s an exploration of 20 L.A. sites of interest for kids, with detailed histories and whimsical “Where’s Waldo”-like windows into mini-Angeleno land.

It’s not necessarily an obvious canvas to capture. To an outsider, an image of the Watts Towers isn’t as likely to elicit as immediate a response as, say, another city’s precious cable cars. “L.A. is much more challenging,” Kleven says. “But it’s such an important place. It’s the second-biggest city in the country, and yet there’s not that much visually about it for children.”

So Jaskol and Lewis--a husband-and-wife team who met as reporters with the Los Angeles Independent Newspapers--began canvassing the city for ideas. As they looked with journalists’ eyes for ethnic and geographic diversity, telling detail and fun quotes, such spots as Olvera Street, Watts Towers, the Getty Center and the Korean Bell of Friendship found a place in the 48-page book. But don’t expect a sugarcoated version of L.A. history: They don’t ignore the first Chinatown falling to bulldozers to make way for Union Station, the World War II internment camps, even Bunker Hill’s 1960s demise, when the city government “tore down the once-grand homes, sheared off the top of the steep hill, and erected a forest of glass and granite towers. . .” Imagine that as a bedtime story.

“This is not a guidebook,” Jaskol says. “We just wanted to celebrate how wonderful Los Angeles is. There are plenty of guidebooks. We want our readers to learn something they didn’t know about the tremendous richness of Los Angeles.”