Collecting Passions: Discovering the Fun of Stamps and Other Stuff from All Over the Place

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Collecting Passions is a work badly in need of a much clearer focus
because its title, subtitle, and contents appear to be in conflict.
Based on the number of pages devoted to a single topic, Collecting
Passions ultimately seems to be a children’s book about stamp
collecting, but its contents largely remain at the level of generalities
and lack the level of specificity that would be truly useful to a
beginning stamp collector. The “Did You Know” balloons, which offer
bits of postal trivia, and the three quizzes are interesting but
secondary to the book’s supposed purpose. The book’s closing two
pages contain the addresses of five “stamp clubs for children” and
nine Web sites. Although Norman Eyolfson is a talented illustrator, his
busy cartoon-style illustrations are simply not appropriate in what is
essentially a how-to book, and his comic renditions of stamps are
unlikely to entice new adherents to philately. Libraries or individuals
seeking a beginner’s guide to stamp collecting would be much better
served , in terms of both quality and price, by Elizabeth MacLeod’s
Get Started: Stamp Collecting for Canadian Kids (1996). Not recommended.