Breathtaking, thrilling and perfect.
A dizzying, masterful command of visual pacing combines with an acute sense of verbal rhythms to provide a glorious account of the Apollo 11 mission, one that stands as the must-buy in this crowded lunar season.
Each page turn presents a surprise: A spread with six horizontal panels showing rocket, bystanders and astronauts during countdown yields to a close-up of the thrusters firing at liftoff and then to a perfectly sublime long shot that positions a tiny Saturn V rocket pulling away from the launch pad above a serenely massive Earth, its curve clearly visible in the horizon of the blue Atlantic—“ROAR.” Floca’s language, in one of his longer texts, is equally gorgeous: “And when the Earth / has rolled beneath / and rolled behind / and let the astronauts go, / the Saturn’s last stage opens wide...” Humor lightly applied provides the necessary grounding touch to this larger-than-human endeavor without ever taking away its sense of moment. The front endpapers give detail-loving readers diagrams and a pictorial chronology; the back endpapers contain a brief history of NASA’s lunar program.
Breathtaking, thrilling and perfect. (Informational picture book. 7-12)Pub Date: April 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-5046-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Richard Jackson/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
This glossy, colorful title in the “I Want To Be” series has visual appeal but poor organization and a fuzzy focus, which limits its usefulness. Each double-paged layout introduces a new topic with six to eight full-color photographs and a single column of text. Topics include types of environmentalists, eco-issues, waste renewal, education, High School of Environmental Studies, environmental vocabulary, history of environmentalism, famous environmentalists, and the return of the eagle. Often the photographs have little to do with the text or are marginal to the topic. For example, a typical layout called “Some Alternative Solutions” has five snapshots superimposed on a double-page photograph of a California wind farm. The text discusses ways to develop alternative forms of energy and “encourage environmentally friendly lifestyles.” Photos include “a healer who treats a patient with alternative therapy using sound and massage,” and “the Castle,” a house built of “used tires and aluminum cans.” Elsewhere, “Did You Know . . . ” shows a dramatic photo of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but the text provides odd facts such as “ . . . that in Saudi Arabia there are solar-powered pay phones in the desert?” Some sections seem stuck in, a two-page piece on the effects of “El Niño” or 50 postage-stamp–sized photos of endangered species. The author concludes with places to write for more information and a list of photo credits. Pretty, but little here to warrant purchase. (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-201862-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More aspirational than realistic at this point, but some of its intended audience will walk on other worlds.
Want to pull up stakes and head for really distant parts? Here’s a quick survey of current possibilities.
Though the obstacles to taking up residence on other worlds seem immense right now, ex-astronaut Williams and co-author Cunti take an optimistic view—pointing out that people have already been living in space longer than readers born after 2000 have been alive and projecting settlements on Mars by as early as 2030. In examining each planet (including ours) and select moons as potential residences, though, they tend more toward breezy comments about packing selfie sticks and ice skates than specific information about feasible solutions to local conditions or hazards. They’re also a bit loose with facts (there’s a measurement of Jupiter’s surface area on the same page as an observation that Jupiter doesn’t have a surface), offer jejune suggestions that other worlds could serve to relieve population pressure or even as new homes should Earth ever need to be evacuated, and occasionally drift off topic to, for instance, discuss “space elevators” and introduce astrophysicist Jedidah Isler, a woman of color who studies phenomena called blazars. Krynauw adds a multicultural cast of young cartoon characters to the mix of digital space art and photos of astronauts aboard the ISS or in experimental habitats on Earth.
More aspirational than realistic at this point, but some of its intended audience will walk on other worlds. (bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 7-11)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77321-058-2
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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