Donna R. Braden

The thing to keep in mind is that this book was issued as part of the exhibition put together by the Henry Ford Museum, so you know you’re getting a book that is trying to do a number of things. And it does all these things okay, and no one of them excellently. The best part is probably the production values. While just a paperback, the quality of the content is on par with any other coffee table book – excellent graphics, nice mix of words and pictures, and just generally pleasing. The part that the book only does okay on is the actual content. For the fan, you will probably not see anything you haven’t seen before – in the stories or the pictures (although there were one or two pictures that were new to me.) And, because it is an exhibition piece, it also does a little analysis of culture. Just as with the other parts, interesting, but nothing new.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m not convinced the facts are all straight. There were a couple of things that made me think, “Wait, that doesn’t sound right to me”. I didn’t feel like doing the work to research the accuracy, but I did find one that was definitely wrong. There are a series of conception drawings for Fantasyland. Included is a proposal for a Shoot the Chutes ride with Monstro. The caption indicates this is the Storybook Land Canal boats. True, Monstro winds up being the first thing on the Storybook Land Canals ride, but it is not what this drawing pictures. If you’re wrong on one thing, everything starts to be suspect.

So, a pretty book that has decent stuff, but nothing new, and some questionable facts. Oops.… (altro)