“Great Lakes Lighthouses: American & Canadian” (Avery Color Studios, $16.95)
There are 41 lighthouses on Lake Ontario, 48 on Lake Erie, 70 on Lake Huron, 79 on Lake Michigan, 70 on Lake Superior and seven on Lake St. Clair, that relative thimbleful of water connecting Huron and Erie. They all are cataloged here, in photographs and thumbnail descriptions, with directions on how to find them and boxes to check off once you do. What could have been a dull list is enlivened with tales of the lakes’ famous ships and diagrams that define the various parts of a lighthouse and different architectural styles.
“Southeastern Lighthouses: Outer Banks to Cape Florida” (Globe Pequot, $19.95)
More lighthouses are displayed in a larger format with lots of color photos and longer descriptions of each lighthouse and its role in history. The star of this volume is North Carolina’s much-photographed Cape Hatteras lighthouse, whimsical in its distinctive, barber-pole black-and-white. A companion volume, “Gulf Coast Lighthouses: Florida Keys to the Rio Grande,” tells how a lighthouse-keeper rescued many who might have perished in the 1906 hurricane that assaulted Galveston, Texas.
VIDEO
James A. Fitzpatrick’s
Traveltalks, 1930-1933
The postmarks are faded, stained with age. Messages they carried were stamped with naivete and mailed from places that no longer exist — bearing dates from a time when cars still had running boards, Africa was unashamedly referred to as the Dark Continent, and it was OK to call Asia the Orient. Before Robin Leach adulterated travel with the rich and famous, before Lowell Thomas covered the globe, James Fitzpatrick pioneered the travelogue, narrated in the crisp tenor of Depression-era America. This collection of 11 “one-reelers” shows us Japan before Pearl Harbor, Argentina before “Evita,” Siam before it was Thailand. It allows us, in 90 minutes, to visit not just a world long-since vanished, but also to revisit how we once viewed it. Fitzpatrick pulled it all off — in remote locations with cumbersome equipment — with a production quality far superior to many modern travel videos. Available June 30 from Kino on Video, $24.95. (800-562-3330)
KID STUFF
Rand McNally Vacation Fun Pack
Open the bright green, briefcase-style box, and there inside are four books whose pages are filled with pictures to color and puzzles to solve: “Find the hidden triangles at Hoover Dam in Nevada,” for instance; or connect the dots to discover “What’s this little mouse swinging on in Philadelphia?” Comes with a package of eight crayons and a sheaf of stickers. For ages 3-7; $15.
“The Kids’ Book of the 50 Great States”
(Scholastic Professional Books, $14.95)
In each state, the children who live there serve as tour guides, telling what they think is important to know and fun to do. Lots of line drawings might entice some young readers to color the pages. Kids will learn that they can go to New Iberia, La., for example, and see how Tabasco sauce is made, or visit the place — now a memorial library — where Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. For ages 8-12.
“Great Lakes Good Times”
(Crystal River Press, $19.95)
Pen-and-ink drawings artfully border plenty of white space on scrapbook pages in this hardbound travel diary. Those pages are balanced by others that help travelers organize their memories by category — what you saw at tourist traps, what you ate, where you stayed, goof-ups and so forth. Young teens should enjoy this, but adults might just like it too.
INTERNET
Saba
(www.turq.com/saba/) Here’s an island so tiny — just five square miles — that its map is drawn to a scale measured in increments of 1,000 meters. But that’s just the part above the waterline. This dormant volcano, 28 miles south of the French/Dutch island of St. Martin/St. Maarten in the Caribbean, is surrounded by a marine park. Three dive shops are listed on the Web site, which doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles but proves to be a solid, informative introduction to an isle visited by fewer than 25,000 tourists each year. Even so, the restaurant Mongo Royale recommends you make dinner reservations.
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Toni Stroud’s e-mail address is tstroud@tribune.com.
