IF I BUILT A TOWN

In zippy, Seussian rhymes and images, a young city planner dreams big.

Strolling with a brown-skinned, bespectacled mayor through idyllic townscapes, part real, part imagined, light-skinned, dark-haired Jack expounds on what the perfect burg would look like. With the exception of schools—which the author skips in order to insert a plug for his If I Built a School (2019)—the ideal version of Jaxtown would have all the essentials, from stylish homes and free stores, both maintained by robots, to a free-range zoo with lots of wild animals including “a griffin, a dino or two, / And three fancy unicorns, white, pink, and blue.” Aerial walkways would twine through striped, bendy trees. There would be a roving health clinic and a big library where “no one controls what you can or can’t read,” but no need for a firehouse or for police (everything here is flameproof, and “nobody argues and nothing goes wrong”). Nearby farms with chickens would make the town self-sustaining (for ovo-vegetarians anyway), and the energy source would be carbon neutral: “We’d end our reliance on foul fossil fuels / And switch to magnetic, electrified jewels.” The racially diverse populace enjoying all the benefits shown in the enticing illustrations include same-sex couples and people using wheelchairs.

Sunny, inclusive, and, sadly, imaginary.