How I Learned Geography - by Uri Shulevitz (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The Caldecott Honor-winning picture book from celebrated storyteller Uri Shulevitz.

"A masterpiece." --New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating." --The Wall Street Journal

Having fled from war in their troubled homeland, a boy and his family are living in poverty in a strange country. Food is scarce, so when the boy's father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread never could.

How I Learned Geography is the award-winning artist's most personal work to date and is based on his childhood memories of World War II, featuring stunning illustrations that celebrate the power of imagination. An author's note includes a brief description of his family's experience, two of his early drawings, and the only surviving photograph of himself from that time.

Review Quotes

This Caldecott Honor-winning picture book from renowned storyteller Uri Shulevitz celebrates the power of imagination.

"A masterpiece." --New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating." --The Wall Street Journal

Having fled from war in their troubled homeland, a boy and his family are living in poverty in a strange country. Food is scarce, so when the boy's father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread never could.

The award-winning artist's most personal work to date is based on his childhood memories of World War II and features stunning illustrations that celebrate the power of imagination. An author's note includes a brief description of his family's experience, two of his early drawings, and the only surviving photograph of himself from that time.

About the Author

Uri Shulevitz (1935-2025) was a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and author. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 27, 1935. He began drawing at the age of three and, unlike many children, never stopped. The Warsaw blitz occurred when he was four years old, and the Shulevitz family fled, as chronicled in his acclaimed memoir Chance: Escape from the Holocaust. For eight years they were wanderers, arriving, eventually, in Paris in 1947. There Shulevitz developed an enthusiasm for French comic books, and soon he and a friend started making their own. At thirteen, Shulevitz won first prize in an all-elementary-school drawing competition in Paris's 20th district. In 1949, the family moved to Israel, where Shulevitz worked a variety of jobs: an apprentice at a rubber-stamp shop, a carpenter, and a dog-license clerk at Tel Aviv City Hall. He studied at the Teachers' Institute in Tel Aviv, where he took courses in literature, anatomy, and biology, and also studied at the Art Institute of Tel Aviv. At fifteen, he was the youngest to exhibit in a group drawing show at the Tel Aviv Museum. At 24 he moved to New York City, where he studied painting at Brooklyn Museum Art School and drew illustrations for a publisher of Hebrew books. One day while talking on the telephone, he noticed that his doodles had a fresh and spontaneous look--different from his previous illustrations. This discovery was the beginning of Uri's new approach to his illustrations for The Moon in My Room, his first book, published in 1963. Since then he has written and illustrated many celebrated children's books. He won the Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, written by Arthur Ransome. He has also earned three Caldecott Honors, for The Treasure, Snow and How I Learned Geography. His other books include One Monday Morning, Dawn, So Sleepy Story and many others. He also wrote the instructional guide Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children's Books. Shulevitz's final book, completed shortly before his death in New York City at age eighty-nine, is The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man's Journey Across Wartime Europe, a narrative nonfiction account of the adventures of his father's brother Yehiel, who ran away from home at age fifteen, journeyed through prewar Europe for a decade, and ended up a member of the Spanish Republican Army and then the Jewish Resistance in Vichy France.