Equally rewarding for sustained dives or random dips.
A day-by-day tally of high-interest events in world affairs, pop culture, science, sports, and more, with some general daffiness thrown in.
Though some of Bova’s entries are speculative (see: April 24,1184 BCE: “The Trojan War…ends.”), there are few if any dull spots in this event-filled browsers’ delight. Strung along mini-timelines, the two to five or so daily events are described briefly but in enough detail to give them context, with highlighted ledes and occasional wisecracks (December 16, 1707: “Mount Fuji kicks some ash”) to further lighten the textual load. Though the general tone is upbeat, historical controversies and tragedies from the Wounded Knee Massacre to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 (“a horrible incident of violent racism”) and the attack on the U.S. Capitol of January 6, 2021 (“the first attempt in American history to prevent a peaceful transfer of power”) do get necessary notice. Often enough, the focus shifts away from North America, Europe, and the past century and a half to serve at least as reminders that interesting and important things have happened in other times and places, too. The layout leaves plenty of space for expanded commentary on special days or other topics, as well as the mix of small photos and Shaw’s cartoon portraits and images that serve as illustrations. A blank ruled page at each month’s end invites readers to fill in highlights from their personal histories.
Equally rewarding for sustained dives or random dips. (index, image credits) (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781958395790
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Hearst Home Kids
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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
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