Whole wide world

AS summer approaches and families gear up for travel to places far and near, let’s pause and consider: What do we wish our children to take away from the experience of travel? An idea of what the important monuments of a place are? An understanding that daily life has a different texture in other parts of the world? Perhaps a witty anecdote or two: a street sign misinterpreted, a shop selling objects you never knew existed? No matter how much whining and how many threats of “never again!” occur during a family vacation, any of these souvenirs seem to validate the whole enterprise.

As preparation for a family vacation, you can’t do better than Czech painter Miroslav Sasek’s “This Is ...” picture-book series for children ages 4 to 8 (though, really, children of all ages will enjoy them). Beginning in 1959 with “This Is Paris,” Sasek (1916-80) published 18 books introducing kids to the pleasures of seeing other places. About half the series has been reprinted, thanks to Universe Publishing/Rizzoli International Publications; the original books can often be found through various used-bookstore networks, though the copies in good condition are avidly collected by Sasek fans and can be quite expensive.

Sasek’s genius as a traveler was for noticing things. Although some of the facts in his guides are outdated -- and these are marked and corrected in careful, unintrusive notes in the new editions -- what sings out clearly is Sasek’s joy at discovering the character of a place through the gesture of a traffic policeman, the plantings in a public garden or the pattern of spires against a city’s darkening sky.

The most obvious quality of Sasek’s paintings is the precise architectural drawing. In Prague, he studied architecture after his parents expressed their disapproval of his first career choice, painting. It’s clear that his precision is an expression of respect for his subject as well as for his audience. “Children today know everything,” he told an interviewer in the late 1960s. “If I paint 53 windows instead of 54 in a building, a deluge of letters pours in upon me!”

But the precision of Sasek’s architectural detail isn’t the sign of a fussy tour guide. There’s a desultory quality to his wanderings through a city that leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that he is a tourist like oneself. Sasek’s working method was to go set up shop in a city for a few weeks and wander around with his sketchbook. This sense of going where his feet take him makes “This Is Venice,” for me, the best of the series; every view, each more exquisite than the last, seems accidentally come upon. What better description of the experience of discovering Venice? He obviously decided beforehand on a few important places to visit, but on the way there, his eye would be caught by a street vendor, for instance. In “This Is Hong Kong,” he notices the many uses to which bamboo is put, from poles on which to hang laundry to the scaffolding for a new skyscraper going up. Then, in a typical visual transition, he shows a vendor selling what looks like bamboo but turns out to be sugar cane.

And don’t those kids sucking on the sugar cane look happy? Sasek never forgets his audience. He has an eye for the things kids notice -- how the cable car operator holds himself as he works the levers in “This Is San Francisco,” or the way the “Take Next Car” sign is positioned to flip up when needed. Noticing funny street signs is a Sasek habit, and a very kid-friendly one; adult eyes slide over text and take it for granted, but children who have recently learned to read see words jumping out at them everywhere. Likewise, he has an instinctive grasp of the fact that kids are often looking up or down; he’ll paint the thicket of electrical cables overhead, or use blank space to show how the eye travels down, down, down a fisherman’s line to see what the catch is.

One of the charming recurring elements of the series is the endpaper art for each book -- self-portraits of the artist approaching the place on the first page and then leaving it on the last, changed by his visit. As you open “This Is Texas,” you see a little man, a portfolio tucked under his arm, gazing in consternation at a great horizon, empty except for an oil derrick. When you come to the end of the book, there he is again, striding out the back cover, wearing a 10-gallon hat, a bandana and a pistol, and hefting a portfolio as long as a Cadillac. I’ve seen Texas, the pictures clearly say; nothing small or quiet about Texas.

And that’s the essence of Sasek’s travel advice: Look, notice, enjoy what’s different about a place, take that knowledge with you when you walk away. It’s just too bad we don’t have him around anymore to introduce our kids to Beijing and Ho Chi Minh City, and other great cities we are traveling to nowadays.

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A child’s-eye view

Universe Publishing/Rizzoli International Publications has brought half of Miroslav Sasek’s “This Is . . .” travel series back into print. Hardcover editions cost $17.95 and have 64 pages. The original publication date is followed by the reissue date:

“This Is New York” (1960, May 2003)

“This Is San Francisco” (1962, May 2003)

“This Is Paris” (1959, April 2004)

“This Is London” (1959, April 2004)

“This Is Ireland” (1964, February 2005)

“This Is Venice” (1961, February 2005)

“This Is Edinburgh” (1961, February 2006)

“This Is Texas” (1967, February 2006)

“This Is Greece” (1966, reissue scheduled for spring 2007)

The other books in the series, still out of print, can be found through an online used-book dealer network such as www.abebooks.com, which has a good selection of children’s books. These titles are “This Is Rome” (1960), “This Is Munich” (1961), “This Is Israel” (1962), “This Is Cape Canaveral” (1963, later retitled “This Is Cape Kennedy”), “This Is Hong Kong” (1965), “This Is the United Nations” (1968), “This Is Washington, D.C.” (1969), “This Is Australia” (1970) and “This Is Historic Britain” (1974).