A (mostly) confidence-inspiring guide for young creators.
A fun how-to manual for aspiring roboticists.
This most recent installment in the Maker Comics series (tagline: “the ultimate DIY guide”) weaves a narrative around six robotics projects of varying difficulty. Toaster 2, a tomato-red appliance who proclaims itself the “most advanced robot ever created,” speaks directly to readers as they follow his lighthearted adventures navigating the perils around his family’s house. It creates an artbot to tackle pesky homework assignments, a scarebot to fend off “your” annoying brother, and three versions of a carbot to move the slumbering family pet, Katty the Destroyer. Each project has a detailed supply list with helpful suggestions of where to procure the more-obscure components and easy-to-follow, illustrated instructions. The robots range from simple designs composed of packing tape and magnets to more sophisticated schemes utilizing breadboards and coding. Venable intersperses engaging factoids throughout the guide on various topics, including the history of glue, a timeline of robotics, and an overview of the computer language Arduino. Hudson’s full-color illustrations are lively; together with Venable’s patient and thorough directions, they should encourage young readers to take the plunge into making their own bots. Also included is a step-by-step guide to starting a robotics club, helping to move any builder’s love from the page to a group. T2’s family is interracial: Dad and “your brother” present Black, and Mom and “your little sister” have Asian features. Both of the latter have offputtingly stylized eyes, and Mom’s hourglass figure and hairstyle skate close to stereotypes of hypersexualized Asian women—a shame, as her textual character development is terrific.
A (mostly) confidence-inspiring guide for young creators. (Graphic nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-15215-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
A likable journey that is sensitive to the triumphs and agonies of being a 13-year-old girl.
Shannon just wants to get through eighth grade in one piece—while feeling like her own worst enemy.
In this third entry in popular author for young people Hale’s graphic memoir series, the young, sensitive overachiever is crushed by expectations: to be cool but loyal to her tightknit and dramatic friend group, a top student but not a nerd, attractive to boys but true to her ideals. As events in Shannon’s life begin to overwhelm her, she works toward finding a way to love and understand herself, follow her passions for theater and writing, and ignore her cruel inner voice. Capturing the visceral embarrassments of middle school in 1987 Salt Lake City, Shannon’s emotions are vivid and often excruciating. In particular, the social norms of a church-oriented family are clearly addressed, and religion is shown as being both a comfort and a struggle for Shannon. While the text is sometimes in danger of spelling things out a little too neatly and obviously, the emotional honesty and sincerity drawn from Hale’s own life win out. Pham’s artwork is vibrant and appealing, with stylistic changes for Shannon’s imaginings and the leeching out of color and use of creative panel structures as her anxiety and depression worsen.
A likable journey that is sensitive to the triumphs and agonies of being a 13-year-old girl. (author's note, gallery) (Graphic memoir. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-31755-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative.
This junior edition of Stewart’s lurid 2011 portrait gallery of the same name (though much less gleeful subtitle) loses none of its capacity for leaving readers squicked-out.
The author drops a few entries, notably the one on insect sexual practices, and rearranges toned-down versions of the rest into roughly topical sections. Beginning with the same cogent observation—“We are seriously outnumbered”—she follows general practice in thrillers of this ilk by defining “bug” broadly enough to include all-too-detailed descriptions of the life cycles and revolting or deadly effects of scorpions and spiders, ticks, lice, and, in a chapter evocatively titled “The Enemy Within,” such internal guests as guinea worms and tapeworms. Mosquitoes, bedbugs, the ubiquitous “Filth Fly,” and like usual suspects mingle with more-exotic threats, from the tongue-eating louse and a “yak-killer hornet” (just imagine) to the aggressive screw-worm fly that, in one cited case, flew up a man’s nose and laid hundreds of eggs…that…hatched. Morrow-Cribbs’ close-up full-color drawings don’t offer the visceral thrills of the photos in, for instance, Rebecca L. Johnson’s Zombie Makers (2012) but are accurate and finely detailed enough to please even the fussiest young entomologists.
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative. (index, glossary, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61620-755-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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