KEEPING THE CITY GOING

 

Order from: Bookshop.org | IndieBound | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 

Signed books are available through my local bookstore, Books Are Magic, here, and  through bookstores hosting online events.

 

• Kirkus Reviews: 10 Picture Books To Look for in 2021

• Publishers Weekly: The Most Anticipated Children's and YA Books of Spring 2021

• A Wall Street Journal Summer Reading Pick

• A Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2021 selection

• A 2021 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books selection

• California Reading Association’s EUREKA! Nonfiction Children’s Book Awards: Gold Award Winner

• 2022 TLA Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List

• 2022 Horace Mann Upstanders Book Award winner

• Outstanding Merit, Bank Street College of Education

Best Children's Books of the Year (2022 edition)

 

Read more about the book at Publishers Weekly, here.

 

Read a Q&A about the book in "The Book Pantry" newsletter, presented by Simon & Schuster Children's Education & Library, here.

 

Read "Attitude of Gratitude," a story about the letter carrier who allowed me to use a photograph of her as reference for a drawing in the book, here.

 

Read an interview about making the book, and see early sketches, at the blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, here.

 

A roundup of 2021 books about the pandemic is here.

 

 

 

Ages 4 to 8

A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book | Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Simon & Schuster, New York

 

 

We are here at home now, watching the world through our windows. Outside we see the city we know, but not as we’ve seen it before. The once hustling and bustling streets are empty. Well, almost empty. Around the city there are still people out and about, driving this and that, going from here to there. These are the people keeping us safe. Keeping us healthy and helping the sick. Keeping our mail and our food delivered. Keeping our grocery stores stocked. These are the people keeping the city going.

 

 

★ Kirkus Reviews (starred review):

 

"In the first days, weeks, and months of the Covid-19 pandemic, life on city streets changed from busy congestion to an eerie quiet. Two children, looking concerned, gaze out from their apartment-house window at a strangely empty scene. Almost the only souls about are delivering food on bikes, hauling flats in supermarkets, or driving buses, trains, and taxis. Sanitation workers, letter carriers, and utility workers continue their work on and under the streets. Firefighters, police officers, and hospital workers are busy. Diverse apartment-house dwellers play their appreciative part, though. Every evening at 7:00 they erupt into a cacophony: noisily cheering, banging pots, and blowing musical instruments. “We are here together.” The narration is in the voice of a very observant child who has not lost their sense of humor, voicing some doubts about a nonessential online purchase. A community spirit shines in the use of we. Floca’s signature illustrations offer meticulously detailed renditions of city buildings and a wide assortment of urban vehicles. Everyone is properly masked. The evening cheers have stopped, but the gratitude has not. The story was first developed as a YouTube video, and here the sound effects are missing, but they can be easily and enthusiastically added by young readers.... Essential reading about essential workers that is informative, reassuring, and positive." Full review here.

 

★ Publishers Weekly (starred review):

 

"With his signature affection for architecture and keen sense of urban space, Caldecott Medalist Floca pays tribute to the frontline workers helping to make New York City run during the pandemic. The book opens on deserted city streets bathed in soft sunshine as two tan-skinned children peer out from behind curtains: “Outside we see the city we know, but not as we’ve seen it before.” The streets may seem empty, but there’s important work being done—by transit drivers, mail carriers, fire fighters, and health-care workers, among others—and subsequent spreads celebrate an inclusive array of professionals through a sort of visual synecdoche in which vehicles represent the gloved and masked figures..... Floca brings precision and expert draftsmanship to renderings of working vehicles, centering the heroes working to get supplies out and save lives, and to the equipment that helps them do it." Full review here.

 

★ Booklist (starred review):

 

"With lyrical text and exquisite, detailed illustrations, Floca reminds readers of the early days of the pandemic with an empty city street. Well, almost empty. A hint of movement in these opening scenes turns into a full-page spread with food deliverers on bikes. Of course, first responders—the fire department, police officers, ambulance drivers, and health care workers—are depicted prominently, but so too are the workers who suddenly become frontline service and care.... The text is light on many pages, allowing the dramatic illustrations to tell the story. The latter are made even more immediate as some of the workers look directly at readers, inviting them into the scenes. At the end, Floca returns to the apartment dwellers, who honor the workers each evening by cheering and banging pots. A moving tribute that remembers essential workers and community in a time of loss." —Angela Leeper. Full review here.

 

The Horn Book Magazine:

 

"Caldecott winner Floca presents a love letter to New York City and its essential workers during COVID-19.... Floca's watercolor, ink, acrylic, and gouache art, in his beautifully realistic style, features delicate lines, light-catching hues, and pore-over-able details, much like an actual city scene. Motion-filled vignettes alternate with expansive spreads to help pace the narrative and hold readers' attention; so, too, do many of the figures' gazes, looking directly out at viewers. The text is true to events but un-alarmist, with restrained lyricism that underscores unity: "We hear the city say to us—and we say back to the city—that we are still here, and we are here together." —Elissa Gershowitz. Full review here.

 

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books:

 

"City-infrastructure book meets pandemic in this title celebrating “the people keeping the city going” when so many are on lockdown inside their homes. A lot of them are people on the move, such as food and grocery deliverers on bicycles, truckers on the go, bus and train drivers traveling their routes, trash collectors doing their best to keep the city clean (“You know, pretty clean, ” amends the text philosophically); there are also health and safety workers, from firefighters to doctors and nurses. Then at 7 p.m. people open their windows and clap and cheer; in Floca’s narrative, this is to applaud “the people still out on the street . . . and taking care of the sick.” The ragged-right prose is compact yet gentle, focusing on the cultural rhythm and infrastructure of pandemic life without talking about COVID itself, adding character with small details about things like non-essential mail orders (“We’re sorry, and we won’t do it again”) and insight into the importance of even pandemic-altered human contact (“We see our neighbors again, now at their windows”). Line and watercolor illustrations are trim and careful, with the usual Floca tendency toward technical detail adding intricate majesty to garbage trucks and subway trains; there are also plenty of people, active and alert and all masked save for those in their homes. Kids outside of New York may not be familiar with the evening applause custom, but they’ll appreciate the focus on essential work and reflection of their daily norms of online life and face-mask wearing. An author’s note about COVID is included." —Deborah Stevenson

 

School Library Journal:

 

"A book from the first year of the pandemic.... A thoughtful book of gratitude for the essential workers with a nod to the unifying theme that we are #allinthistogether. An important title, it will open the door for discussion of the pandemic and its effects."—Ramarie Beaver. Full review here.

 

The Wall Street Journal:

 

"In Keeping the City Going, Brian Floca pays elegant tribute to the men and women who went out to work during the Covid-19 lockdown while the rest of the country hunkered indoors. Set in Brooklyn, this forthcoming picture book returns us to the early days of the pandemic, when crowded public spaces became deserted, busy thoroughfares went silent, and children who would otherwise have been at school looked out from windows at home on a world made strange. “The voice of the city is low, and the streets are almost empty,” the young narrator tells us here. “Almost, but not entirely. There are still some people out on the streets, driving this and that, heading from here to there.”

 

Mr. Floca, whose picture book Locomotive won the 2014 Caldecott Medal, has a fondness for vehicles, and in these careful ink-and-watercolor pictures he shows 4- to 8-year-olds the modes of transport that proved so useful (see below): delivery bikes, taxis and buses; ambulances, big rigs and bakery vans; pallet jacks, steel dollies and hand trucks. Amid the machinery are masked human figures—hospital workers, mail carriers, police officers—who kept working. At once a statement of gratitude and a time capsule—at least, let’s hope so—Keeping the City Going exudes the feeling of patriotic common cause that prevailed during those first extraordinary months." —Meghan Cox Gurdon. Full review here.

 

The San Francisco Chronicle:

 

"Transportation-obsessed kids will pore through this engrossing gallery of vehicles that keep New York (or any city) functional during the also unnamed crisis — a bike, garbage truck, subway car, taxi, mail truck, fire truck, police car and ambulance, plus those vital delivery trucks. But more important than essential vehicles are essential workers themselves." —Susan Faust. Full review here.

 

The Boston Globe:

 

"A profound tribute by a Caldecott medalist to the heroic essential workers who kept us going during the pandemic. From bus drivers to food deliverers to hospital workers to garbage collectors, he celebrates the people who kept us safe and helped us “feel not so alone.” Inspired by his personal experience in Brooklyn, Floca is skilled at depicting detailed urban settings and his gentle, minimal text makes this an important book to remind us what the pandemic felt like and to be grateful to those who helped us make it through." —Betsy Groban. Review here.