The Magic School Bus must be in the garage, but teacherly chaperon Professor Tempo not only expedites the outing, but even looks like Ms. Frizzle (in slacks).
Though he professes boredom, her student Augustus turns out to have a rather encyclopedic grasp on historical highlights. Teacher in tow, he skitters chronologically through past eras, from the first harnessing of fire 1 million years ago or so (“I know—awesome, eh?”) to 1969’s moon landing. Along the way he name-checks platoons of historical figures including six ancient Olympic champions, Nefertiti, and “Tutankhamen’s mother,” Qutb-ud-din Aybak, first sultan of Delhi, Leonardo (“bit of a genius”), Ada Lovelace, Australian pioneer pilot Nancy-Bird Walton, Einstein (“a friendly dude”), and three of the five Marx Brothers. Done in the flat, retro, screen-print look of M. Sasek’s This Is… series, Stevenson’s stylized illustrations are crowded with labeled figures in period costume, but Augustus, sporting red glasses and schoolboy shorts, can be picked out easily enough. Despite good intentions, it’s a Eurocentric tour, with the slanted eyes of Qin Shi Huang and associates adding that parochial flavor…but readers touch down at least once on every inhabited continent, and Augustus’ interests run more to arts, trains, and people than to wars and disasters.
A truly long field trip, with nary a map nor a timeline but unusual stops aplenty. (resource list, index) (Informational picture book. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84780-704-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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Using a provided packet of helpful tools, readers can search for clues along with a historical spy in the house of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
Fans of ciphers and hidden clues will find both in abundance, beginning on the copyright page and continuing to a final, sealed-off section of explanations and solutions. Fictionalized but spun around actual figures and events, the tale centers on Bowser, a free African-American who worked undercover as a maid in Davis’ house and passed information to a ring of white Richmond spies. Here she looks for the key phrase that will unlock a Vigenère cipher—an alphabetic substitution code—while struggling to hide her intelligence and ability to read. As an extra challenge, she leaves the diary in which she records some of her experiences concealed for readers to discover, using allusive and sometimes-misleading clues that are hidden in Cliff’s monochrome illustrations and in cryptic marginal notations. A Caesar cipher wheel, a sheet of red acetate, and several other items in a front pocket supply an espionage starter kit that readers can use along the way; it is supplemented by quick introductions in the narrative to ciphers and codes, including Morse dashes and dots and the language of flowers.
Plenty of work for sharp eyes and active intellects in this history-based series opener. (answers, historical notes, biographies, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7611-8739-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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Sprouting bodies and grins, the states introduce themselves alphabetically in this Basher History gallery.
Following the series’ cast-in-stone design, each entry poses in a cartoon portrait with small emblems representing prominent physical features, industry, number of native U.S. presidents and other select distinctions. On opposite pages, a hearty self-description dominates: “Aloha! Come and hang ten with me, dude. I’m a bunch of chilled-out islands in the Pacific, but I have a fiery heart.” This is sandwiched between bulleted lists of superficial facts, from state bird, flower and nickname to (for Arkansas) “Known for diverse landscape, extreme weather, and Walmart.” U.S. territories bring up the rear, followed by a table of official state mottos and, glued to the rear cover, a foldout map. Along with out-and-out errors (a mistranslation of “e pluribus unum”) and unqualified claims (Boston built the first subway), Green offers confusing or opaque views on the origins of “Hawkeye,” “Sooners,” some state names and which of two “Mississippi Deltas” was the birthplace of the blues. Furthermore, a reference to “sacred hunting grounds” in West Virginia and Kentucky’s claim that “It wasn’t until pioneer Daniel Boone breached the Cumberland Gap…that my verdant pastures were colonized” are, at best, ingenuous.
Chatty, formulaic, superficial—and dispensable, as the content is neither reliable nor systematic. . (index, glossary) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7534-7138-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY
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