Australian Roland Harvey’s “In the…” books are so funny and detailed that staring at them is addictive.  What began with In the Bush, a camping holiday that was a perfect combination of strange and familiar, progressed through to At the Beach and now In the City.  Each book features the same family, Frankie, Henry, Penny, Mum and Dad, with guest appearances by the irrepressible Uncle Kev, visiting various locations and in effect, providing a travelogue of the trips. 

Each of the children take turns providing their own unique perspective on their trips, complete with snapshots, facts, and exceptional drawings, showcasing a kind of fictionalised Sydney in a way that no tourist brochure could. 

Older children (and adults) will enjoy looking for tiny bizarre and often hysterical moments tucked into the pictures, such as a piano falling off the bridge, a dragon sucking a boy up through a straw, a sign offering a free pair of socks with every lasagne meal, a flying swiss army knife, or a sign in the lion’s den at the zoo saying you are “on the wrong side of the pen”.  The text is funny too, demonstrating the character of each of the narrative voices, and revealing the characters of the others through the observations. 

Penny picks up a tiny Taipan as a souvenir (don’t try that at home), and has beetroot and licorice ice-cream at Bondi (I think it was Bondi) while Dad has chicken ripple and baci.  Henry finds Ned Kelly’s iron underpants and gets samples from the giant scientist’s bowels. 

All of the children amass a fair amount of information about the places they go, and it’s generally real information (not counting the ice cream flavours, Ned’s knickers, and the dragons in the sewers), which makes this book interesting as well as entertaining.  For example, we learn that the population of the city is 3,425,763, and that there are hundreds of (dragon-infested) kilometres of tunnels under the city, or that barracuda eat anchovies.