The app takes advantage of zoom features to take readers through panel by panel, providing a sense of forward motion that...
Traditionally a paper-based series, Middle School Confidential adapts its first graphic novel to the iPad leveraging the device’s functionality to infuse a wide variety of sounds, short songs and character voices.
The app takes advantage of zoom features to take readers through panel by panel, providing a sense of forward motion that synchronizes well with the text’s format. Divided into eight chapters, the story introduces relevant teen topics such as body image, self-esteem, popularity and stress through short, everyday interactions among a group of six male and female friends. To round out each chapter, a teen presents a related short message that’s more public-service announcement than component of the story, which may feel over the top to the audience. Each character is presented through actions and dialogue in the short chapters and with a brief bio that includes his or her strengths and insecurities. Additionally, each bio includes an e-mail address, which links to the iPad’s e-mail function; there is no indication of who will actually receive a reader’s e-mail message and what if any response such an e-mail might trigger. The images in the line-and-watercolor panels mirror and reinforce the characters’ related emotions or actions.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
Earnest but insubstantial, marred by mismatched art and subpar paper engineering.
A tribute to the original Renaissance man, with pop-up models and other special features.
The illustrations mix reproductions of actual works by Leonardo and some of his contemporaries with Geis’ own drab, flat daubs, and the combination is not a happy one. Fitting in sketchy biographical details as she goes and with an eye to demonstrating the artist’s legendary versatility, she devotes each of seven spreads to a particular project or topic. The huge, never-finished horse commissioned by the Duke of Milan, for instance, is represented here by a featureless brown pop-up of the clay model flanked by standing lines of indistinct onlookers that lean back even when the leaves are fully separated. Similarly, on a final spread anachronistically headed “Robots,” a simply rendered armored figure jerks an arm and a leg with the pull of a tab, but the author does not say whether Leonardo’s design was ever built, nor does she show or describe its actual mechanism. Much of the narrative and most of the small, murky reproductions are squeezed into peanut-shaped booklets. For “Portraits,” three reproduced paintings on flimsy loose sheets can be slid from a frame and exchanged, and based on one tiny partial sketch, readers are invited to glue together an “ideal city” like Leonardo’s from a set of larger punch-out sheets in a pocket at the end.
Earnest but insubstantial, marred by mismatched art and subpar paper engineering. (Informational pop-up. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61689-766-6
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Be a best friend and give this book to someone who has not read it
One decision can change your life…these 10 decisions turned a man into a president.
The father-daughter Hirschfeld team examines the life of Abraham Lincoln in this quirky and humorous biography. The narrative is written as if it’s speaking directly to Lincoln, using active, directional statements that transport readers into each highlighted moment of history. And what a history it is; 10 key moments in Honest Abe’s life (including the coinage of that moniker) are discussed across 10 chapters. Each chapter concludes with a quiz for readers encouraging them to predict how Abe should react to each situation. Each quiz is followed by “The Reveal,” a summary of how and why Lincoln responded to each specific situation. Sprinkled throughout are facts about Lincoln’s life, vocabulary lessons, and archival images of Abe’s contemporaries embellished with humorous, cartoonish speech bubbles. The overall effect gives readers an image of our 16th president that is humanizing and engaging. After the 10 questions have wrapped, the book continues over an additional 10 chapters that are packed with trivia, information on Abe’s personal and professional lives, and one score and change of bibliographic wonders. The humor doesn’t run out in the second half; readers are challenged to imagine Abe’s reactions to modern concepts from genetic engineering to emojis. Educators will love this title for its wealth of information, and young readers will love it for its welcoming tone.
Be a best friend and give this book to someone who has not read it . (Biography. 10-12)Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-50953-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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