Quick but horizon-broadening flyovers, just the ticket for budding naturalists.
A select world tour of major mountains and mountain ranges, with stops to marvel at distinctive formations and wildlife.
Guillain begins at the top—of Mount Everest, that is—with an explanation of how mountains are formed, then moves down its slopes, pausing for closer looks at a small, high-altitude spider, the “icefall” of Khumbu, a snow leopard on the prowl, and finally four types of butterflies found in Himalayan meadows. From then it’s on, in a mix of similar slow descents and quicker whistle-stops, to volcanoes in Iceland, the Alps, Mauna Kea (which is higher than Everest, counting the part underwater), the Andes, Mount Fuji, the Rockies, and finally the dazzlingly layered Rainbow Mountains in northwestern China. Along with distant but properly majestic views of snowy, rugged peaks, Madden’s mountain scenes feature broad lakes and rivers, wide blue skies, and, in most foregrounds, precisely detailed flora and fauna. Some of the latter go unidentified, and conversely, the rare and large Titicaca water frog and some other creatures mentioned in the text are nowhere to be seen. Still, a sailboat beneath Fuji being the only sign of human occupation, readers are left to appreciate the natural wonders on display undistracted and to join the author in expressing, as she does at the close, a fervent desire to preserve them.
Quick but horizon-broadening flyovers, just the ticket for budding naturalists. (map, index, print and web resources) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4354-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental...
Pollution, energy use, and simply throwing things away have created a worldwide mess that kids can help clean up with an eight-step action plan.
This well-meant offering introduces the idea of the interconnectedness of human activities and the state of our world. We’re all affected by pollution. Our need for energy results in a variety of current problems: unclean air, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns. We should use less. Trash doesn’t vanish; it must be burned or dumped. We should also recycle. This helps save trees, which “eat up pollution.” Colorful, unsophisticated cartoons show a bunny magician who cannot make trash disappear and a diverse array of young people who can. The author’s strong message is undercut by end matter that twice states that “many scientists” consider climate change to be caused by global warming. A National Academy of Sciences survey in 2010 showed an overwhelming consensus: 97 percent. Inspired by her concern for the environment, Kondonassis wrote this when she was unable to find an appropriate book that would explain to her young daughter why she should care. Too bad she missed Kim Michelle Toft’s The World That We Want (2005) or Todd Parr’s The Earth Book (2010).
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental tweets. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61608-588-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete...
A mouse, a bird, and a junkyard frog assemble a car from the ground up—cluing in readers who may be a bit vague on what’s beneath all those hoods…or at least what used to be.
Enlisting his green buddy Hank to supply the parts and feathered Phoebe to draw up the plans, Eli, “king of crazy ideas,” sees his latest project grow from a frame and some miscellaneous loose parts to a nifty blue convertible with a classic 1950s look. At each stage, Sodomka supplies clearly drawn angled or cutaway views with dozens of major components labeled, from “steering knuckle bracket” to “tie rod” and “ball joint.” The gas tank is labeled but seems to be missing, though, and readers who want to know what a “differential” actually does or the purpose of the “indicator switch” are out of luck. Lacey’s claim that an engine “is like the brain of the car” doesn’t bear close examination, either. Moreover, the finished auto isn’t much like most modern cars, as it has no electronic elements, for instance, and is powered by a three-cylinder engine (misleadingly billed as “regular”) quaintly fed by a long-obsolescent carburetor. With an auto under their belts (and with similar oversimplification), Eli’s “Scrap Pack” goes on to an even more ambitious enterprise in How to Build a Plane. In both volumes, closer looks at selected systems or related topics follow the storyline’s happy conclusion, and each broad trial-and-error step in the construction is recapped at the end.
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete pictures. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63322-041-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Quarto
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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