Desert Town is one of a quartet of books the Geiserts have created picturing small-town America throughout the seasons of a single year. Each of the four books in the sequence published by Houghton Mifflin, which also includes Prairie Town (1998), River Town (1999), and Mountain Town (2000), can be enjoyed without looking at the others. Because each book is set in an entirely different landscape, it’s possible to see how that particular landscape affected each town historically and in recent years. The four towns have undergone permanent, even drastic change since they was first settled. Many pages in one book can be compared to those in one or more of the other three: topography, seasonal weather, recreation, housing, schools, stores where people shop, work some people do, transportation, Saturday nights. One can notice how buildings of various types or activities for children, teens, and adults in each town change from season to season, or within 12 months. The width of the 8 ¹ / ₄ x 11 ¹ / ₄ ” books doubles when they’re wide open. It’s possible then to see the span of a main street head-on or most of the community from a bird’s-eye view. The colored artwork created by Arthur Geisert, a master etcher, contains an almost unbelievable amount of architectural and sociological detail and encourages scrutiny and thought. The Geiserts imply without sentimentality that although small changes occur in a town within a brief year, the former landscapes of American small towns changed rapidly not so long ago. Look closely. Everything matters. (Ages 5–9)