In wordless panoramas, Anno travels through history in his search for things American.
- ISBN: 9780399209741
- Author: Anno, Mitsumasa
- Illustrator: Anno, Mitsumasa
- Published: 1983 , Philomel
- Themes: architecture, City, countryside, History, wordless book
- Descriptors: Asia, Fiction, Japan, Picture Book, Primary (ages 6-9), United States
- No. of pages: 40
Mitsumasa Anno portrays America in a very different but effective way. Typically, students study American History starting with Christopher Columbus and ending with present day history. Going along with this theme, history is often taught from East to West. Mitsumasa Anno takes a different approach when looking at the USA. Anno’s USA takes the reader through America’s history backward, starting in present day Hawaii and leaving the USA on the east coast, as Christopher Columbus is arriving on the Santa Maria.
I found this book very confusion in the beginning. My mind has been trained to learn history from the traditional manner, so reading Mr. Anno’s book was confusion at first. After reading it a few times, and yes, even backwards, looking at the pictures closely, the book came alive. There are characters from throughout history, Charlie Brown, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Sawyer, in this book which makes the reader use context clues to place the city and the time period in which Anno is painting and representing. The most interesting part of the book, I feel, is that in every page there are Native American’s being forced out of their home land moving from the right page to the left page.