A remarkably uninformative informational book.
Like many inventions, it seems, super glue came about by accident.
Unfortunately, readers are likely to be left with more questions than answers after reading this disappointing biography of the miracle goo’s inventor. Harry Coover invented the stuff, but his surname is inexplicably withheld until the end of the narrative. One irrelevant fact revealed from the beginning was his penchant for saying “yaba daba,” which is irritatingly repeated throughout the text. His favorite subject was chemistry, but readers don’t learn what drew him to it. During World War II, Coover “was asked to develop a plastic [that] needed to be strong, solid and transparent.” Why he was asked to do this, for what purpose, and by whom is not revealed. Coover and his team accidentally created a mixture called cyanoacrylate, which is now popularly known as super glue. After years in development, it was officially put on the market, and his adhesive found many uses. Veterinarians used it to mend bones; battlefield medics used it to stop blood loss; and detectives used it to collect fingerprints—though how is not explained. Engineers supposedly used it to fix a space shuttle, but how and which one are not revealed. Complementing the scant information are equally unenlightening cartoon illustrations depicting the White scientist in action with colleagues, some of whom are people of color. There are no source notes or bibliography.
A remarkably uninformative informational book. (timeline) (Picture book/biography. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-84886-647-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Maverick Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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