Written strictly in sweeping generalities, and illustrated with over-manipulated photos and prints that give way to eye-glazing charts toward the end, this survey of our species’ spread from Africa to every continent is more likely to extinguish reader interest than kindle it. Opening with vague allusions to the combination of physical and behavioral traits that makes us human, the author describes in dry prose how our ancestors prospered thanks to the successive harnessing of fire, food, plants and animals, commerce and finally fossil fuels. She then goes on to speculate about future population trends, and closes with a weakly justified claim that we have all become migrants. There are some factual errors, such as the assertion that language and art were invented at about the same time, but more significantly, in her effort to maintain a worldwide perspective, the author seldom tucks in the sort of specific discovery or fact that might have brought her topic to life. Strictly assignment fodder. (resource lists) (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7613-3458-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Marguerite Henry died barely two years ago, after living the life of which most writers dream: She wrote from the time she was young, her parents encouraged her, she published early and often, and her books were honored and loved in her lifetime. Her hobby, she said, was words, but it was also her life and livelihood. Her research skills were honed by working in her local library, doing book repair. Her husband Sidney supported and encouraged her work, and they traveled widely as she carefully researched the horses on Chincoteague and the burros in the Grand Canyon. She worked in great harmony with her usual illustrator, Wesley Dennis, and was writing up until she died. Collins is a bit overwrought in his prose, but Henry comes across as strong and engaging as she must have been in person. Researchers will be delighted to find her Newbery acceptance speech included in its entirety. (b&w photos, bibliography, index) (Biography. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 10, 1999
ISBN: 1-883846-39-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Subtitled “A concise guide to a century of contrast and change,” with “concise” as the key word, this slim survey takes sweeping, single-spread glances at wars, the decline of empires, show business, the battle for racial and sexual equality, the globalization of US culture, and other major themes of this century. Underscoring the text’s generalizations, the many full-color photographs are chosen to create pointed juxtapositions, matching, for instance, Marlene Dietrich to Buzz Lightyear, or impoverished parents and children in 1912 London and in modern Somalia. Selected events are highlighted both in chronologies on every spread and along a timeline that spans the last four pages. Too scanty for basic reference, and employing oversimplification (as well as the same photograph of Mickey Mouse twice) to a fault” “the culture of Hollywood, represented by the smiling face of Mickey Mouse, became the culture of the whole world”—this provides only a slim framework on which to hang some understanding of recent history. (charts, chronology, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: May 17, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-521488-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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