This mix of narrative fact and anthropomorphized visual fancy fails to add up.
Borstlap examines the roles that microbes play everywhere on Earth and touches on their potential for solving human-created problems like plastic waste.
Initial double-page spreads focus on the microscopic size and wide-ranging distribution of microbes throughout the planet. “They live on your body and on every imaginable thing throughout the world…and they can even live 3 miles (5 km) below the earth.” A clunky analogy posits that “if we could fit all the people on Earth into a single teacup,… / …we would need a big container for all the world’s microbes!” Highly stylized illustrations fail to redeem this vagueness(possibly due in part to the uncredited translation from French), presenting the “container” as a large rectangular box decorated with confettilike splotches. More effective spreads pair arresting facts with the capricious, cartoonlike graphics. Microbes can “create families in less than an hour.” (A digital timer clocks 59 minutes above a microbe “family” peppered with wailing offspring.) Some microbes can feed on metal: Borstlap illustrates this fact with a series of toothy mouths chomping on nuts and bolts. Readers visit the cross-sectioned colon of a human (on a toilet, with a cellphone) and glean a bit about microbes’ roles in food production, natural recycling, and prospects for sustainable energy and plastics production. The complex language in eight concluding pages of factual material contrasts markedly with the text’s up-tempo tone. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This mix of narrative fact and anthropomorphized visual fancy fails to add up. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-7913-7497-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Prestel
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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