Following hot on the heels of Actual Size (2004), the author’s presentation of relative size in modern animals, is this exploration of size from the beginning of life to about 3 million years ago. Aside from the introductory and concluding animals, he presents creatures chronologically from the most ancient to the most modern, taking care to display representatives of the various divisions of the animal kingdom. Readers will see a one-millimeter dot representing a protozoan, the front third of a two-meter long millipede and a terrifying close-up of the teeth of the 14-meter-long Giganotosaurus, as well as various other critters. Jenkins’s usual stellar collages deliver the usual spectacular goods, depicting slimy skin and feathers with equal ease. The brief gloss for each animal—including when it lived and its size in both English and metric figures—is supplemented by backmatter that goes into greater depth; there is also a paragraph explaining how the artist arrived at the colors and textures he uses. A metric ruler on the back complements the English ruler on the front flyleaf, so budding scientists can measure both ways. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-53578-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sugary uplift, shrink-wrapped for the masses.
An elusive new quarry leads the How To Catch… kids on a merry chase through a natural history museum.
Taking at least a step away from the “hunters versus prey” vibe of previous entries in the popular series, the racially diverse group of young visitors dashes through various museum halls in pursuit of the eponymous dino—whose quest to “spread kindness and joy ’round the world” takes the form of a mildly tumultuous museum tour. In most of Elkerton’s overly sweet, color-saturated scenes, only portions of the Loveosaurus, who is purple and covered with pink hearts, are visible behind exhibits or lumbering off the page. But the children find small enticements left behind, from craft supplies to make cards for endangered species to pictures of smiley faces, candy heart–style personal notes (“You Rock!” “Give Hugs”), and, in the hall of medieval arms and armor, a sign urging them to “Be Honest Be Kind.” The somewhat heavy-handed lesson comes through loud and clear. “There’s a message, he wants us to think,” hints Walstead to clue in more obtuse readers…and concluding scenes of smiling people young and otherwise exchanging hugs and knuckle bumps, holding doors for a wheelchair rider, and dancing through clouds of sparkles indicate that they, at least, have gotten it. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Sugary uplift, shrink-wrapped for the masses. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 9781728268781
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Who could resist? Staring straight out from the handsome album-like cover is a slight man with a shock of white hair and an intense, intelligent gaze. Over his shoulder looms the enormous mouth of a dinosaur. This is perfectly designed to pique reader’s curiosity with one of the strangest true stories dinosaur lovers will ever read. The man is Waterhouse Hawkins, who, in Victorian England, devoted his life to making ordinary people aware of dinosaurs at a time when most had never heard of them and could not imagine what they looked like. Hawkins, an established author/illustrator of books on animal anatomy, estimated the scale of the dinosaurs from their bones, made clay models, erected iron skeletons with brick foundations and covered them over with cement casts to create dramatic public displays. Such was Hawkins’s devotion to his work that he engaged the Queen’s patronage, catered to the fathers of paleontology at a dinner party inside an iguanodon model, and was invited to bring his dinosaur models to Central Park. It was in New York that Hawkins’s story turned grimly sad. Antagonizing Boss Tweed with some ill-chosen words, Hawkins thereafter found his dinosaurs smashed and buried beneath Central Park, where they remain today. The fascinating story, well documented in authoritative, readable author and illustrator notes, is supported by creative decisions in illustration, bookmaking, and design. Hawkins was a showman, and Selznick presents his story pictorially as high melodrama, twice placing the hero front stage, before a curtain revealing a glimpse of the amazing dinosaurs. Turns of the page open onto electrifying, wordless, double-page spreads. A boy who appears at the book’s beginning and end (where he sits on a park bench in Central Park while fragments of the lost dinosaurs lie among the tree roots below) affects a touching circularity. Stunning. (Nonfiction. 5-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-11494-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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