A big, breezy banquet of dino facts—and factoids.
A world tour of reconstructed prehistoric landscapes based on modern fossil discoveries.
Going continent by (modern) continent in a series of big, populous maps and full-spread scenes, Hawkins and Letherland feature 31 dinosaurs or prehistoric reptiles but add dozens of others—all identified, supplied with quick descriptive notes, and depicted in a simplified but reasonably realistic style. This adds up to a weighty bundle of names and facts, but the authors compensate by not taking their enterprise too seriously. Readers won’t soon forget, for instance, that the “massive droppings” of T. Rex “were as long as a human arm,” and sharp-eyed viewers will notice a Ceratosaurus carrying a butterfly net to bag prey, both a toothy T. Rex and a Giganotosaurus with napkins tied around their necks, and smaller hunters sporting the odd pith helmet or kerchief. Also, there is a certain cognitive dissonance between the writer’s grisly references to predators attacking a corpse in a “group rip with steak-knife teeth” or exclamations of “Crunch, crunch, shark for lunch!” and visuals in which predators and prey pose without making actual contact and there is no visible blood or gore. A catastrophic meteorite (with proper references to the contemporaneous volcanism) brings both the era and the tour to a close.
A big, breezy banquet of dino facts—and factoids. (index) (Informational picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78603-035-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts.
From a Caldecott and Sibert honoree, an invitation to take a mind-expanding journey from the surface of our planet to the furthest reaches of the observable cosmos.
Though Chin’s assumption that we are even capable of understanding the scope of the universe is quixotic at best, he does effectively lead viewers on a journey that captures a sense of its scale. Following the model of Kees Boeke’s classic Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (1957), he starts with four 8-year-old sky watchers of average height (and different racial presentations). They peer into a telescope and then are comically startled by the sudden arrival of an ostrich that is twice as tall…and then a giraffe that is over twice as tall as that…and going onward and upward, with ellipses at each page turn connecting the stages, past our atmosphere and solar system to the cosmic web of galactic superclusters. As he goes, precisely drawn earthly figures and features in the expansive illustrations give way to ever smaller celestial bodies and finally to glimmering swirls of distant lights against gulfs of deep black before ultimately returning to his starting place. A closing recap adds smaller images and additional details. Accompanying the spare narrative, valuable side notes supply specific lengths or distances and define their units of measure, accurately explain astronomical phenomena, and close with the provocative observation that “the observable universe is centered on us, but we are not in the center of the entire universe.”
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts. (afterword, websites, further reading) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4623-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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