Skyrockets and Snickerdoodles: A Cobtown Story - Hardcover

Julia and Robert Van Nutt have been working together for twenty-five years. During this time, they have worked on numerous design jobs, from freelancing for The New York Times to working on sets and costumes for a Broadway play. In the last ten years, they have designed eight children’s books and six animated videos that were shown on national television.
The Van Nutts use history to guide them as they write and illustrate their Cobtown stories. With an amazing cast of characters and an in-depth study of everyday life in the 1840s, these stories–inspired by a hobby of collecting electric trains–take place in the village of Cobtown.

Gr. 2-4. The Van Nutts team up again for another slice of Americana pie, less successfully than in previous books in their fiction picture-book series. Told in diary form, the story centers on a Fourth of July baseball game and Cobtown's missing town marker. In the absence of the marker, the town is to be renamed Carbuncle, and Lucky Hart and her fellow baseball teammates aren't happy about playing on the Carbuncle Skyrockets. This provides the same gentle humor as previous books, but any pretense at historical accuracy goes out the window when a baseball team in 1845 includes girls. Some nice touches in book design and artwork give things a cheery, patriotic feel, but only libraries with devoted Cobtown fans will want to add this to their collections. Susan Dove Lempke
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