Magnificent paper engineering, but the text and pictures don’t measure up.
Notes on our planet’s history and current state, with pop-up highlights.
The exploration begins with a layered 3-D globe that splits open to reveal a brilliant, foil-lined interior. It goes on to present a lush tableau of pond flora and fauna, a schematic of an erupting volcano with a saw-toothed sound effect, an explosion of playing cards (reflecting one of the narrative’s more fanciful images), and an Edenic tropical waterfall scene. Alas, Charbonnel’s five intricate pop-ups are the stars of a show that doesn’t have much else to recommend it. Buxton fills the pages with arbitrary-feeling arrays of creatures and things that are sometimes labeled and sometimes not, sometimes to scale and sometimes not, and sometimes only marginally relevant to the topic. This is most notable on a spread on climate peril that’s dominated by an oil tanker on fire surrounded by icebergs, fish skeletons, and fire boats. Jankeliowitch does no better, comparing the biosphere to a house of cards (see above) right after noting that it actually has a long history of recovering from extinction events and misinforming readers that the modern Earth is 6,000 years old, that volcanoes help to control our planet’s internal heat, and that in 5 or so billion years the Sun will “go out.” A group scene intended to depict human diversity includes only four that are not clad in casual Western attire; of those four, two are significantly exoticized.
Magnificent paper engineering, but the text and pictures don’t measure up. (Informational pop-up picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65257-2
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Prospective space tourists should have no trouble finding a more reliable travel guide.
Barr and Williams present 13.8 billion years of cosmic history, from the Big Bang to the International Space Station and, possibly soon, flights beyond.
The co-authors write with the same enthusiasm and energy they showed in telling The Story of Life (2015) but with less regard for accuracy or internal logic. Following an inherently paradoxical opening claim that “Before the Big Bang there was….[n]o time,” they go on with a sweeping survey of the cosmos. It offers a picture of galaxies “sparkling silently” (wrong on both counts) in “bitterly cold” space (likewise wrong: space has no temperature), with incomplete references to the “freezing” atmospheres of our solar system’s other planets (Venus’ 462 C average temperature goes unmentioned) and the “cold, dusty moon” orbiting Earth (cold only on the side away from the sun). Two space-suited young explorers, one light-skinned, one dark, float through painted illustrations that progress from mighty explosions and swirling starscapes to closely packed planets, fleets of early spacecraft, a cloud of satellites, and, finally, space liners ferrying multicultural tour groups to an orbiting hotel, or maybe Mars.
Prospective space tourists should have no trouble finding a more reliable travel guide. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78603-003-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A sketchy teaser in search of an audience.
A subatomic narrator describes how helium, a nonrenewable resource, is formed deep underground.
The very simple cartoon style of the illustrations suggests a breezier ride than the scientifically challenging content delivers. With much reliance on explanatory endnotes, Rooney sends her zippy narrator—newly freed from a popped balloon (see Eddie the Electron, 2015)—barreling its way past billions of nitrogen and oxygen atoms to the top of the atmosphere. Eddie describes how uranium and thorium trapped in the newly formed planet’s crust self-destructed to leave helium as a stable byproduct. Billions of tedious years later (“I thought I would die of pair annihilation!”) that helium was extracted for a wide variety of industrial uses. Following mentions of Einstein and how Eddie is mysteriously connected to other atoms “in a way that surpasses space and time,” the popeyed purple particle floats off with a plea to cut down on the party balloons to conserve a rare element. Younger readers may find this last notion easier to latch onto than the previous dose of physics, which is seriously marred both by the vague allusions and by Eddie’s identification as a helium atom rather than the free electron that his portrayals in the art, not to mention his moniker, indicate.
A sketchy teaser in search of an audience. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944995-14-0
Page Count: 27
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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