The team of Vivien Bowers and Dianne Eastman has done it again. They’ve produced yet another book that is humorous, lively, and interesting. This fourth title in a series about Canada features the author herself and her sidekick, Morton, as narrators. Their role is to answer some of the hundreds of questions they’ve received from children across Canada. The answers are organized into three chapters: the first deals with wildlife, the second with geography, and the third with culture.

While the answers to the questions are written in a clear, upbeat, conversational style that readers will enjoy, what really makes this book unique and exciting is its design. Designer and illustrator Dianne Eastman varies the look of each spread with a combination of sidebars, colour photographs, and humorous mini-conversations between the narrators. Sidebars feature interviews with experts, information detours to satisfy the narrators’ curiosity, and clues about how to use the Internet for research. Speech bubbles superimposed on the photographs or linked to digitally produced minor characters provide additional humour for the book.

Readers can use this book in a number of ways: they can dip into it to mine interesting tidbits of information with which to impress friends. (For example: “Did you know that the Canada-U.S. border runs through an opera house in Quebec? The stage is in Canada while the seats are in the U.S.”) With its extensive index, they can also use it as a project resource and as a springboard for further writing about Canada. Whatever use readers make of this book, they’ll find it an enjoyable read.