A quick visual guide for beginners that’s visually engaging but lacks depth.
An illustrated introduction to the world of urban legends past and present.
In this full-color guide, author and illustrator Boardman breaks down the history of urban legends from around the world and across time, opening with a section called “Premodernity” and closing with the “Metamodern Era.” In his introduction, he explains the difference between myths and legends, describes the different types of people who investigate urban legends, and shows how these stories proliferate. The older tales covered include the Loch Ness Monster, vampires, and lost cities such as Ys and El Dorado. Readers will also learn about Spring-Heeled Jack, a notorious criminal from 19th-century England, and 1990s chain emails warning people about black market organ thieves. The book covers fan favorites—cryptids, UFOs, and Slenderman. While the visual appeal is high thanks to the stylish, colorful art, each topic gets only a cursory treatment, letting down those looking for a deeper dive. The repetition in this very short work soon becomes tiresome as well, with details repeated throughout each section. Nevertheless, those new to the subject may enjoy this guide, which lends itself well to casual browsing. The backmatter includes a glossary, further reading (which contains—but doesn’t differentiate between—fiction and nonfiction), further watching (a puzzlingly eclectic mix that includes both the 1960s Scooby-Doo TV series and The Blair Witch Project), and an index.
A quick visual guide for beginners that’s visually engaging but lacks depth. (Graphic nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781838749101
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest.
A quick history of hacking, from the “phone phreaks” of the 1960s to today’s attacks on commercial data stores large and small.
Drawing solely from previously published reports and documents, the authors paint an alarming picture (“The internet has become a cyber criminal playground”) as they trace the growth of increasingly sophisticated digital attacks on personal, corporate and government data systems. Though they rightly point out that many hackers, from early “phreaks” like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on, have been motivated more by the pleasures of creating software or high-tech gear (or, as they acknowledge in the case of Edward Snowden, idealism) than criminal intent, most of the incidents they describe involve theft or espionage. Noting that attacks can come from anywhere in the world and that malware can be secretly installed not just on computers, but on any number of gadgets, the authors project little hope of keeping our information safe from bad guys. Nor do they offer more than, at best, bare mention of firewalls, encryption, two-step verification, strong passwords and other protective countermeasures. Still, readers will at least come away more aware of the range of hazards, from phishing and ransomware to botnets and distributed denial of service, as well as the huge, rapidly increasing amounts of money and data shadowy entities are raking in.
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest. (source notes, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4677-2512-5
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution.
An exploration of animal intelligence.
Castaldo opens with a discussion of brainpower before summarizing historical thinking on animal cognition and then presenting evidence of it, in the form of a dizzying array of experiments on such subtopics as decision-making, empathy, a sense of fairness, and communication, among others. Candy-colored pastel shades and striking photographs make flipping the pages a pleasure, but actually reading them is something of a chore. Sidebars often appear out of sequence with the text and are of varying levels of utility, as is also the case with photo captions. Low points include a reference to the author’s middle school report on dolphins and a photograph of a dolphin alone in a tank that’s labeled, “A dolphin at the National Aquarium is studied by cognitive researchers.” Chapters are broken up into subtopics with catchy headings (“The Hive Brain”; “Emo Rats”) except when they are not, as with a relatively lengthy discussion of interspecies communication that wanders from bonobos to dolphins to Peter Gabriel to orangutans. The book’s sense of its audience is uncertain. Profligate use of exclamation points and simplistic “what would you do” scenarios seem geared to younger readers, while the un-glossed use of such terms as “habeas corpus” and “prosocial,” as well as a conceptually complex model of brain processing, assumes a fairly sophisticated audience.
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution. (resources, glossary, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-63335-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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