Required reading for serious dinophiles.
Thimmesh (Lucy Long Ago, 2009) again explores the border between science and speculation in this thoughtful look at how paleontologists and, in particular, “paleoartists” reconstruct prehistoric creatures from fossil evidence.
It’s “guesswork,” admits one artist. “But it’s guesswork based on science.” The author explains how surviving evidence—including fossilized bone fragments, plant matter, bits of skin and, recently, feathers, prehistoric “trackways” (preserved pathways of dino footprints) and similar physical features in modern animals—is assembled and interpreted by scientists. She also traces the evolution of dino art, from Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins’ fanciful reconstructions of heavy-bodied giant lizards to today’s images of quick, deft, graceful creatures. In support, examples of Hawkins’ approximations and the once-authoritative dinosaur paintings of Charles R. Knight from the first half of the 20th century contrast sharply with more detailed and dramatic scenes, often of the same dinosaurs, by Greg Paul and other currently active artists the author has interviewed. Sketch pages, alternative color patterns on the same model dino, and facing images of a Deinonychus before and after the discovery of fossilized feathers provide further insight into paleoart’s methods, challenges and rewards.
Required reading for serious dinophiles. (biographical appendix, source list, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-99134-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Bial (A Handful of Dirt, p. 299, etc.) conjures up ghostly images of the Wild West with atmospheric photos of weathered clapboard and a tally of evocative names: Tombstone, Deadwood, Goldfield, Progress, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, the OK Corral. Tracing the life cycle of the estimated 30,000 ghost towns (nearly 1300 in Utah alone), he captures some echo of their bustling, rough-and-tumble past with passages from contemporary observers like Mark Twain: “If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.” Among shots of run-down mining works, dusty, deserted streets, and dark eaves silhouetted against evening skies, Bial intersperses 19th-century photos and prints for contrast, plus an occasional portrait of a grizzled modern resident. He suggests another sort of resident too: “At night that plaintive hoo-hoo may be an owl nesting in a nearby saguaro cactus—or the moaning of a restless ghost up in the graveyard.” Children seeking a sense of this partly mythic time and place in American history, or just a delicious shiver, will linger over his tribute. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06557-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
In this companion to Portraits of War: Civil War Photographers and Their Work (1998), Sullivan presents an album of the prominent ships and men who fought on both sides, matched to an engrossing account of the war's progress: at sea, on the Mississippi, and along the South's well-defended coastline. In his view, the issue never was in doubt, for though the Confederacy fought back with innovative ironclads, sleek blockade runners, well-armed commerce raiders, and sturdy fortifications, from the earliest stages the North was able to seal off, and then take, one major southern port after another. The photos, many of which were made from fragile glass plates whose survival seems near-miraculous, are drawn from private as well as public collections, and some have never been published before. There aren't any action shots, since mid-19th-century photography required very long exposure times, but the author compensates with contemporary prints, plus crisp battle accounts, lucid strategic overviews, and descriptions of the technological developments that, by war's end, gave this country a world-class navy. He also profiles the careers of Matthew Brady and several less well-known photographers, adding another level of interest to a multi-stranded survey. (source notes, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7613-1553-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
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