A bit lecture-y, but engaging and useful nonetheless.
Tips and exercises for budding writers from a veteran Canadian novelist.
Aside from opening with an ungracious comment that studying how stories work is “more fun than the other things you learn about in school,” Scrimger presents plenty of spot-on suggestions and insights for crafting effective beginnings, middles, ends, and revisions. “My hack,” he writes, “is to look inside yourself for something you truly care about. It’s harder to be boring when you care.” Along with this and other essential basic principles, he infuses his discourse with pop quizzes, writing exercises, and occasional recaps that culminate in a closing section of summary takeaways. His claim to an approach that will produce not only better writers but better readers, TV watchers, and gamers may be a bit of a reach, but like all good storytelling manuals, this one provides both warm encouragement and a selection of time-tested tools for hesitant wordsmiths. Given that Scrimger draws heavily on school talks and workshops, the tone does occasionally wax didactic, but the book’s mood is lifted by the many amusing examples and anecdotes, plus McFadzean’s broadly comical spot art and cartoon caricatures. People depicted in the illustrations are racially diverse.
A bit lecture-y, but engaging and useful nonetheless. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781770498426
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Occasionally clever—fifth-grade boys will love it.
“There is a lot of nonsense written about the human body,” writes the author, “and this book is no exception.”
Though not quite making good on his promise of “100 percent fact-free chapters,” (he does accurately describe “chondrolaryngoplasty”) Griffiths’ anatomical tour in general steers clear of anything that would be marked as correct on a test. From “Ears can be big or small, depending on their size” to “Capillaries are the larval form of butterflies,” he offers pithy inanities about 68 mostly real body features. Though he closes every entry with “That is all you need to know about…,” he then goes on to regale readers with the news that the epiglottis was named after a Greek philosopher and other “Fun Body Facts.” Similarly, noting that his illustrations “may not be scientifically accurate” (the understatement of the decade), Denton nonetheless provides on nearly every spread profusely labeled, free-association cartoon views of each body part. These are filled out with tiny figures, mechanical apparatus and miscellaneous junk. Though serious young researchers may be disappointed to find the “Private Parts” pages blacked out, a full index follows to provide ready access to any references to poo, pus, farts, drool, “sneeze-powered missiles” and like essentials.
Occasionally clever—fifth-grade boys will love it. (Humor. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-36790-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Knowing why something costs so much might make you appreciate it, and the people who get it to you, more—and, perhaps, to...
Ka-ching! The sound says it all, but it is only the end of a long journey, as Sylvester and Hlinka explain.
You buy a baseball hat. Easy enough: You mowed the neighbor’s lawn, they gave you $5, and you gave that $5 to the store for the hat. But there is a lot more going on behind the scenes—the harvesting of the cotton for the hat, its construction (domestic, foreign), the cost of getting it to market, advertising, storage, etc. It’s a web of economic connections that Sylvester and Hlinka spell out with clarity in this primer on how your money gets divvied when you slap down that fiver. For any kid paying attention, this book will be a shocker. Sylvester and Hlinka build from fundamentals: What is value and worth, what is a salary (from the Latin for salt, when wages were paid in salt), what are costs, what is that thing called tax, and what does it buy? Sylvester and Hlinka are not out to overthrow capitalism, but simply by explaining how a credit card works or why energy companies make a dollar on seemingly every transaction, they spur readers to wonder about transparency and the ownership of natural resources.
Knowing why something costs so much might make you appreciate it, and the people who get it to you, more—and, perhaps, to act on that knowledge. (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55451-481-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
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