Celebrated Czech emigre architect-turned-illustrator and author Miroslav Sasek is best known for his now-iconic This Is… series, which was enormously influential in the history of children’s picturebooks. (His This Is New York was among my 10 favorite books on NYC in my recent collaboration with The New York Public Library.) Created between 1959 and 1970, the books explore some of the world’s most beloved cities in vibrant vintage illustrations, bringing the urban organism to life through charming anecdotal details.

In the 1960s, four 12-minute animated films were produced to accompany some of the books, using the signature “iconographic” method of Weston Woods Studios to create the illusion of animation from still images, including one based on This Is Israel (public library) — a bittersweet and perhaps idyllic piece of cultural memory, at once timeless and dated as we confront a half-century of conflict in the very land Sasek so beautifully depicted:

The entire This Is… series is a treasure — highly recommended.