Spunky protagonists get a realistic look at a historical female scientist in an accessible series opener.
Time-traveling lab partners Asha and Baz get a firsthand lesson from famed rocket scientist Mary Sherman Morgan.
Clever lab partners and best friends Asha and Baz are determined to win the science class rocket contest in order to meet beloved astronaut Chris Hadfield. While brainstorming how to propel their rocket, Asha accidentally transports them back to North American Aviation in 1957. Inside, they encounter lone female scientist Mary Sherman Morgan, who is working on another propulsion problem—launching a satellite into space to compete with the Soviet Union in the space race. Asha and Baz witness Mary’s invention of the liquid rocket fuel known as Hydyne. While they’re discouraged by the sexism Mary encounters, she perseveres and pushes them to keep working on their own project. Despite an abrupt time shift and a lack of background information about the main characters, the story is engaging and the vocabulary is appropriate for both the age group and the subject matter. Illustrations are emotive, lively, and well placed, and robust backmatter adds much value to this promising new series. Though the protagonists’ race and ethnicity aren’t specified in the text, illustrations depict Asha as brown-skinned and Mary and Baz as light-skinned.
Spunky protagonists get a realistic look at a historical female scientist in an accessible series opener. (timeline of the U.S.–Soviet Union space race; information on Mary Sherman Morgan, Chris Hadfield, and the Soviet Union; resources on space) (Science fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-988761-67-1
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Common Deer Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Charming.
An assortment of unusual characters form friendships and help each other become their best selves.
Mr. and Mrs. Tupper, who live at Number 3 Ramshorn Drive, are antiquarians. Their daughter, Jillian, loves and cares for a plant named Ivy, who has “three speckles on each leaf and three letters in her name.” Toasty, the grumpy goldfish, lives in an octagonal tank and wishes he were Jillian’s favorite; when Arthur the spider arrives inside an antique desk, he brings wisdom and insight. Ollie the violet plant, Louise the bee, and Sunny the canary each arrive with their own quirks and problems to solve. Each character has a distinct personality and perspective; sometimes they clash, but more often they learn to empathize, see each other’s points of view, and work to help one another. They also help the Tupper family with bills and a burglar. The Fan brothers’ soft-edged, old-fashioned, black-and-white illustrations depict Toasty and Arthur with tiny hats; Ivy and Ollie have facial expressions on their plant pots. The Tuppers have paper-white skin and dark hair. The story comes together like a recipe: Simple ingredients combine, transform, and rise into something wonderful. In its matter-of-fact wisdom, rich vocabulary (often defined within the text), hint of magic, and empathetic nonhuman characters who solve problems in creative ways, this delightful work is reminiscent of Ferris by Kate DiCamillo, Our Friend Hedgehog by Lauren Castillo, and Ivy Lost and Found by Cynthia Lord and Stephanie Graegin.
Charming. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781665942485
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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