illustrated by David Macaulay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1977
Everything you've always wanted to know about how a castle was defended—in a fusion of the organic and the technical that David Macaulay hasn't quite achieved before. "On a high limestone outcrop" along the Welsh coast, master engineer James and his staff build a castle and a town for Lord Kevin—to help secure northwest Wales, in 1283, for Edward I. Thus, from one or another bird's-eye view, one sees the site as a ditch outlines the town, a moat cuts off the castle rock, bounding walls and towers rise, houses line the streets and stretch, with their garden plots, to the town wall—where at last, in 1295, Welsh soldiers mount an attack. Meanwhile, one has also watched, close-up, the intricate construction of battlements, towers, gatehouses (and garderobes) designed to make the imaginary "Aberwyvern" an impregnable fortress. So there is no little drama in seeing the attack repulsed, the defenses hold; but Macaulay does it artfully, with pictures (a catapult assembled, and then abandoned), and moves on in good historic order to the town spreading beyond the walls, Welsh and English passing freely through the gates. At the very last "Master James's mighty castle" is a moonlit ruin—ending in romance what began as a calculated plan. The factually-minded and fantasizers will find equal reward here.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1977
ISBN: 0395329205
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1977
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by Lois Ehlert ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 1988
From the artist who created last year's shoutingly vivid Growing Vegetable Soup, a companion volume about raising a flower garden. "Mom and I" plant bulbs (even rhizomes), choose seeds, buy seedlings, and altogether grow about 20 species. Unlike the vegetables, whose juxtaposed colors were almost painfully bright, the flowers make a splendidly gaudy array, first taken together and then interestingly grouped by color—the pages vary in size here so that colored strips down the right-hand side combine to make a broad rainbow. Bold, stylish, and indubitably inspired by real flowers, there is still (as with its predecessor) a link missing between these illustrations with their large, solid areas of color and the real experience of a garden. The stylized forms are almost more abstractions than representations (and why is the daisy yellow?). There is also little sense of the relative times for growing and blooming—everything seems to come almost at once. Perhaps the trouble is that Ehlert has captured all the color of the garden, but not its subtle gradations or the light, the space, the air, and the continual movement and change.
Pub Date: March 21, 1988
ISBN: 0152063048
Page Count: 66
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988
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by Kate Messner ; illustrated by Mark Siegel ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2020
A lovely encouragement to young writers to persist.
This follow-up to How To Read a Story (2005) shows a child going through the steps of creating a story, from choosing an idea through sharing with friends.
A young black child lies in a grassy field writing in a journal, working on “Step 1 / Search for an Idea— / a shiny one.” During a walk to the library, various ideas float in colorful thought bubbles, with exclamation points: “playing soccer! / dogs!” Inside the library, less-distinct ideas, expressed as shapes and pictures, with question marks, float about as the writer collects ideas to choose from. The young writer must then choose a setting, a main character, and a problem for that protagonist. Plotting, writing with detail, and revising are described in child-friendly terms and shown visually, in the form of lists and notes on faux pieces of paper. Finally, the writer sits in the same field, in a new season, sharing the story with friends. The illustrations feature the child’s writing and drawing as well as images of imagined events from the book in progress bursting off the page. The child’s main character is an adventurous mermaid who looks just like the child, complete with afro-puff pigtails, representing an affirming message about writing oneself into the world. The child’s family, depicted as black, moves in the background of the setting, which is also populated by a multiracial cast.
A lovely encouragement to young writers to persist. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5666-8
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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by Kate Messner ; illustrated by MacKenzie Haley
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by Kate Messner ; illustrated by Heather Ross
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by Grace Lin & Kate Messner ; illustrated by Grace Lin
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