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| Iggy Peck, Architect | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrea Beaty
Creator: David Roberts
Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95 (37.55 RON)
Buy New: $10.85 (25.54 RON)
You Save: $5.10 (12.01 RON) (32%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 26737
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Library Binding
Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 32
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 11.1 x 9.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 081091106X
EAN: 9780810911062
ASIN: 081091106X
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 10 | | NEXT » |
 Fun book, especially as a gift for current or future architects! March 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I first saw this book in the children's gift shop of the Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art, and have since purchased three copies as gifts. It's very witty, and I love the modern look of the drawings. It's very enjoyable to read as an adult, so reading it over and over (and over!) to your child won't drive you to hide the book. This would make a fun gift for children of architects.
Start them young! January 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great book! Being an architect, Iggy Peck is a great "first impression" of "what daddy does after he drops me off from school." I read Iggy Peck to my 4-year old daughter at bedtime, and she loves the story, but why does Iggy save the day with a shoestring bridge and not a building? Nevertheless, the story shows that creativity does have a place in education.
Lastly, I felt so delighted to come home from another busy day and see on the refrigerator a piece of paper from her school that is written/scribbled "When I grow up I want to be an ARCHITECT." I think, does Iggy have anything to do with this?
Cheers!
 Loved it December 18, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love these drawings. The big rumps and hair are cool. I am not an architect and I enjoyed it thoroughly, however I did buy it for my architect friends and their baby.
I love it, a bushel and a Peck November 24, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
You are a children's librarian. Your job is simple. People ask you for books. You find books. People ask you for movies. You find movies. It's all pretty basic, really. You get requests from teachers too, once in a while. "Oh, we're doing a unit on tadpoles." "What have you got in the way of circus titles?" And, most dreaded of all, "We're doing a community workers unit". In my particular library system, once a year the teachers will ask for books regarding different occupations you might find in the community. Firemen, and police workers, and vets. All that good stuff. Of course, sometimes the kids want books that talk about what their parents do. And if you work in a library located in the heart of New York City, there's a pretty good chance that that's gonna mean one very special job: Architects. Now go and name me all the picture book architectural stories you can think of. Go on! I'll wait here until you're ready. Thought of a whole bunch? No? Thought of a few? Thought of one? Well, obviously you thought of one since you know what this review was of from the start. Yes, "Iggy Peck, Architect", is (as far as my limited experience informs me) one of the very few books out there dealing with a kid who is fated to follow a path of structural bliss.
It was pretty clear right from the start that Iggy Peck wasn't your normal toddler. No, by age two he'd discovered how to construct towers out of diapers (interesting, if not particularly sanitary). By three he used fruit to create his constructions, and by the time he hit the second grade he was getting more and more creative. That's when he got into Ms. Greer's class. Ms. Greer had once suffered an unfortunate incident in a very tall building, and the result is that she felt from there on in that, "all building-lovers were nuts." Forbidden to build, Iggy's spirit is crushed. That is, until the day the class is trapped on a small island with little hope of escape. Little hope, that is, until Iggy's skills prove useful when it comes to escape.
Of course I can already see the wild glint in the eyes of the parents who will hope against hope that by buying this book they will be able to coerce their own little Johnny or Jill into wanting to be an architect someday too. You can't hardly blame `em, neither. I mean, the combined efforts of author Andrea Beaty and illustrator David Roberts make this particular occupation look remarkably cool. Roberts bears much of the credit for this, I'll wager. His style appears to be nothing so much as Gerald McBoing Boing meets Frank Lloyd Wright. And I will wager good money that Mr. Roberts has probably flown under your radar until now. At this point in time he was probably best known for his Cinderella: An Art Deco Love Story, which gives you a fairly good sense of his tastes and styles. In "Iggy Peck", Roberts has channeled the style of the late 50s, early 60s instead. Iggy is a chipper soul with a thick patch of hair that flies straight out from the top of his head like a plane from a landing strip. The women in his life, that being his mother and his teacher Miss Lila Greer, sport some remarkable up-dos of their own. That alongside their natty sweaters, single print dresses, and high-button shoes, gives the book a kind of grounding in the history of American design. Fortunately for us, Roberts has not traveled so far back that he has failed to create a nicely multi-ethnic classroom. And might I say, much of the fun for grown-ups reading this book centers on getting to watch the clothes and shoes of the other kids in Iggy's class. Hairstyles too.
Roberts makes use of watercolors, pen and ink (on Arches paper, no less), and a whole smattering of graph paper as well. I was initially going to say that he did a lot of mixed media, but on closer inspection I see that this is not the case. Roberts only gives the impression of mixed media (no small feat) and his use of color and form is fabulous. When we see a younger Miss Greer staring down from the ninety-fifth floor of her building (we know it's the ninety-fifth floor since the elevator says that the elevator is on the 3rd to the 6th power floor), she's the only bright yellow spot visible against a gray, lifeless landscape. Also, due to the fact that the author is asking Mr. Roberts to construct a suspension bridge out of "boots, tree roots and strings, fruit roll-ups and things", as well as castles from chalk, bridges out of pancakes, and even chapels from apples, I'd say that he does a pretty good job. Heck, the book even turns the words on the page into wavy smell lines when the plot calls for such a thing. How's that for dedication?
The story we find here is entirely reliant on liking your protagonist and appreciating his struggle. And you do like Iggy. Iggy's a pretty cool dude. A little too focused on a single all-consuming passion, maybe, but at least he knows what he likes. Ms. Andrea Beatty offers enough details here to get kids interested in not only Iggy's trials but that of his young teacher as well. The defining moment in Miss Greer's life, when she was trapped in an elevator with a French circus troupe, is sufficiently horrific to make anyone understand her dislike of tall buildings. The fact that the book is written in verse is a tough one though. If you're going to walk that line then you need to be just as careful as possible when it comes to scansion. So it is that lines like this sometimes had to give me pause: " `We're trapped here! Oh my! Alas, kids, good-bye!' / Her eyeballs rolled back in her head. / She dropped to the ground with a vague groaning sound. / (Luckily fainted - not dead)." I mean, you can make it work if you give a brief pause before the word "luckily", but anyone reading this book aloud is going to have to read it through a couple times before trying it out on the kids.
All that said, it's a treat. Original and enjoyable and lots of fun to read. And hey, if you want to use it to convince the youth of America that architecture is a fun and interesting occupation, by all means go ahead.
Book encourages creativity November 20, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Reviewed by Leslie Granier and Nicholas Lopez (age 5) for Reader Views (11/07)
Iggy Peck is a boy who has been building things since he was two-years old. His first creation was a tower made out of diapers and glue. He also made replicas of famous landmarks out of some interesting materials. However Iggy's passion for architecture is squashed by his second-grade teacher because she had a bad experience in a building when she was a child. On a class picnic, a bridge collapses and Iggy and his classmates save the day by using their ingenuity to build a new bridge out of common items.
When asked what his favorite things in the book were, Nicholas said it was definitely the pictures. He thought the "giant cat" was funny (it was really a sculpture of the Sphinx). He laughed at young Iggy when he went around without wearing a diaper. But his favorite was the one when the teacher was stuck in the elevator with the French circus. He also thought it was "awesome" that a little kid could build "really cool stuff."
I also enjoyed the illustrations. The rhyme scheme used in this book kept it fast-paced and interesting. I thought focusing on the ingenuity of kids was an important part of this book because it teaches that with enough effort and passion kids can accomplish some incredible things. "Iggy Peck, Architect" encourages creativity in children by allowing them to use their imaginations for coming up with their own creations.
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