Shortcut

By: David Macaulay (1995)

This book is about a man and his horse that set off a chain of events that affects many other people while on their way into town. The man, Albert, and his horse, June make many decisions along the way, including taking shortcuts, and stopping for rest that influence other characters in the book greatly.

As I was reading this book I wasn't quite sure what was happening at first but as I read more and studied the pictures I was eventually able to see how the different stories and characters influenced each other. I really enjoyed the pictures in the book and I thought that they were very descriptive, helping tell the story along with the words. The pictures were all very colorful and entertaining and I think they would be seen as very interesting and entertaining to elementary age students.

As I teacher I think that this would be a great book to introduce in your classroom because of overall complexity of the story. While many children's books follow the same routine of a straight forward story, this book breaks that mold by having multiple stories that occur around the same time and influence each other. I think that children would really like the pictures and the silly stories that they tell. This would be a great book to read to your students multiple times, asking them to reflect on how certain actions made by characters affect the rest of the book given that they already know the outcome from previous readings.