Cities are places that are fast paced, jam packed and full of diversity. For those wanting to know more about cities, I Love My City by France Desmarais, Richard Adam and Yves Dumont contains anything you ever wanted to know about cities and how they operate.

Through historical facts and current practices, authors France Desmarais and Richard Adam bestow a wealth of knowledge about cities upon the reader. There is A LOT of information in this non fiction book for middle grade readers. It’s comprehensive and general so that readers in any part of the world can gain more understanding about the places where large segments of the population live and work.

I like that the book is straightforward and very factual. It’s a book for readers who want to know more about cities without any extra fluff. I can see this book being used in a school setting where readers are learning about urban environments. It’s not a book, however, that I would see many readers picking up and reading for pleasure unless they have a keen interest in urban spaces and planning.

The open-endedness of the information allows readers to take in the information and apply it to their own location wherever they are in the world and allows for comparison between cities and urban and rural settings. For me, living in Toronto, I would have loved to have a little more information about Toronto specifically or even other cities in Canada. If after reading you too are interested in a little more Toronto centric information, I recommend checking out a self published title by Mariko Uda PH.D: Where does it all come from? Where does it all go?

Yves Dumont’s illustrations add colour and interest to the book that can otherwise be a bit heavy on facts. I love the cross sections of city waste and water services, the colourful buildings and the city dwellers, although I would have loved to see a little more diversity in the illustrations of people moving about the cities.