3-D World Atlas and Tour »

Marie Javins is a writer, comic-book editor, and world traveler who, in 2001, made a complete lap around the globe using ships, trains, buses, and other kinds of surface transportation (almost entirely without planes!). Since then she has lived in Australia, Spain, Uganda, Namibia, Kuwait, Egypt, New Jersey, and New York.

Much more than an atlas, this book is a virtual travel experience! It includes more than 40 maps, 30 feature articles on impressive places, and more than 50 eye-popping 3-D photos of the world's most interesting sights. Readers visit the Grand Canyon, look down from the top of the Eiffel Tower, "snorkel" in the Great Barrier Reef, peek inside a blue ice cave in Antarctica, and more! Physical maps are also rendered in 3-D, so mountains bulge out from the page.

Kirkus Reviews

Well stocked with frequent exclamations ("No one knows what happened to the Sphinx's nose. It's been missing for hundreds of years!") and maps that spring into low relief for viewers who don one of the two pairs of cardboard-framed glasses provided, this quick spin around the world will give armchair tourists both basic map skills and inviting glimpses of distant places and people. Javins skips from continent to continent, providing for each a 3-D physical map, one or more simplified (2-D) political maps and a handful of postcard photos of natural or manufactured wonders that are also, often, enhanced by a peek through the special glasses. Though aside from the gimmick there isn't much to distinguish this from the plethora of other beginner atlases, the commentary's breezy tone lightens the informational load, and the maps are particularly clean and legible. (Nonfiction. 7-9)