Late, lubberly, unlikely to survive fitter treatments.
Long retraces the courses of both Darwin’s voyage aboard the Beagle and the growth of his epochal insight into evolution’s driving mechanism.
Trailing a flotilla of publications over the past decade celebrating the 200th anniversary of the naturalist’s birth and the 150th of his magnum opus, this unexceptional account sails a course that has been more ably navigated—most recently, for example, in Fabien Grolleau’s graphic Darwin: Voyage of the Beagle (2019) and annotated, illustrated adaptations of On the Origin of Species by Rebecca Stefoff (2018) and Sabina Radeva (2019). Notable here is how the influential role that John Edmonstone, a formerly enslaved taxidermist from Guyana, played in shaping the young Darwin’s interests and skills is highlighted in both the narrative and with a full-page portrait by Kalda (who also adds staid views of modern students of various ethnicities, including one wearing a hijab, into the closing summary). Many other important predecessors and colleagues are relegated to an appendix, however. The author also tries to sail too close to the wind with blanket claims that before Darwin scientists reckoned Earth’s age in just thousands of years (not all of them) and that Origin actually kicked off the “long-running battle between science and religion” (Galileo, among others, might disagree). Stick with more seaworthy vessels.
Late, lubberly, unlikely to survive fitter treatments. (glossary, timeline) (Illustrated biography. 9-11)Pub Date: July 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4968-4
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
An updated and more melodramatically titled version of a 1994 title, it sounds warnings that have grown all the more...
Bright, sharp nature photos and a special focus on ice-based ecosystems set this survey apart from the usual run of assignment titles on glaciers and the polar regions.
Returning continually to the dangerous effects of global warming, the authors describe changes in climate conditions at both poles and explain how those changes affect glaciers and icebergs. Wilson and León go on to introduce threatened or officially endangered life forms that live in those habitats. These range from algae and the glacier flea (“Each night it freezes, hard as a popsicle, to the surface ice until warmer daytime temperatures free it”) to polar bears and penguins. With side glances at Mount Kilimanjaro and the Swiss Alps, the photos capture Arctic foxes in both winter and summer coats, penguins and puffins at their most photogenic, glaciers rolling grandly down to sea and luminous views of sunlit icebergs and a glacial ice cave. Bulleted facts at the end reinforce the message; leads to eco-activist organizations provide readers motivated by it with means to get involved.
An updated and more melodramatically titled version of a 1994 title, it sounds warnings that have grown all the more immediate. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9799759-0-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: London Town Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate.
Stepping carefully around the controversies, a former curator at Monticello reconstructs the septuagenarian Jefferson’s active daily round.
Jefferson’s fixed routine begins with a faithful recording of temperature and weather at first rising and ends with a final period of solitary reading by candlelight in his unusual alcove bed. In between, the author describes in often fussy detail the range of his interests and enterprises. There’s not only his “polygraph” and other beloved gadgets, but also meals, family members, visitors, and excursions to Monticello’s diverse gardens, workshops and outbuildings. Like the dialogue, which mixes inventions with historical utterances, the generous suite of visuals includes photos of furnishings and artifacts as well as stodgy full-page tableaux and vignettes painted by Elliott. The “slaves” or “enslaved” workers (the author uses the terms interchangeably) that Jefferson encounters through the day are all historical and named—but Sally Hemings and her Jeffersonian offspring are conspicuously absent (aside from a brief name check buried in the closing timeline). Jefferson adroitly sidesteps a pointed question from his grandson, who accompanies him on his rounds, by pleading his age: “The work of ending slavery is for the young.”
Well-informed and much-idealized if not entirely simplistic pictures of both the great man and his bustling estate. (sidebars, endnotes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0541-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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