Of course I picture you with Grow With the Flow always at your side, perhaps in a tooled leather pouch made to order for the book. If that’s so, check page 176 (it’s not online yet) for my paean to maps, which explains why I see them as one of the overarching tools for cognitive development.

Raven Maps are the most beautiful maps I’ve ever seen. (Apparently The Wall Street Journal agrees with me, although I can’t find their review.)

We have two of the maps, the US in color and Colorado, up in a back room at our offices – there was no wall left for them in the waiting room or halls, but once we’d seen them, Tom and I couldn’t bear to not show them to others. No child (and few parents) walks into that room without being drawn to them, and going for a bit of a journey.

Incidentally, if you check out the web samples, please believe me, even high resolution images can’t begin to capture the detail and print quality of the originals.

Completely Irrelevant Footnote

I wonder sometimes why it takes me 90 minutes to write a simple post like this one. Let me count the detours: I got to thinking about how the beauty of a map and its utility are one and the same. That led to Ode on a Grecian Urn (John Keats; “Beauty is truth…).

I wondered then who said that form follows function, and was surprised to discover it was
Louis Sullivan. (He actually said, “Form ever follows function.")

Wandering from that link, I discovered that Sullivan’s student, Frank Lloyd Wright had said it perfectly in relation to maps, and many other things:

“Form follows function’ — that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.