Kids who are hooked on Tom Angleberger’s series can fold a host of monsters to threaten their Origami Yodas.
Starting with the easiest-to-fold Imp and progressing through 16 other monsters to the daunting-looking Sky Sprite, Mitchell arranges the book as a progression. Most readers, though, will want to skip right to the three awesomest, those featured on the cover, with their prominent teeth and fangs; the remainder of the monsters are pretty generic and look much alike. Cleverly, however, these monsters use at least two squares of paper each, meaning that their bodies and heads can be mixed and matched to create new creatures. As with most origami books, this one begins with a two-page introduction about folds and the symbols that will be used in the instructions, which are easy to follow even for beginners. Each project features a full-color photo of the finished model followed by numbered steps that are both written and visual. Since many of the models share basic body parts, readers will need to flip back and forth, as directions are not repeated for each separate project. And origami paper is a necessity—the teeth, fangs and eyes only pop with two-sided papers.
Those who have caught the origami bug can have some monstrous fun folding and mixing and matching. (Nonfiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77085-409-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A compendium of paranormal doings, natural horrors, and eerie wonders worldwide and (in several senses) beyond.
Maladroit title aside (“…in Bed” would make more sense, cautionwise), this collection of hauntings, cryptids, natural and historical mysteries, and general titillation (“Vampire bats might be coming for you!”) offers a broad array of reasons to stay wide awake. Arranged in no discernible order the 60-plus entries include ghostly sightings in the White House and various castles, body-burrowing guinea worms, the Nazca lines of Peru, Mothman and Nessie, the hastily abandoned city of Pripyat (which, thanks to the Chernobyl disaster, may be habitable again…in 24,000 years), monarch-butterfly migrations, and diverse rains of fish, frogs, fireballs, and unidentified slime. Each is presented in a busy whirl of narrative blocks, photos, graphics, side comments, and arbitrary “Fright-O-Meter” ratings (Paris’ “Creepy Catacombs” earn just a “4” out of 10 and black holes a “3,” but the aforementioned aerial amphibians a full “10”). The headers tend toward the lurid: “Jelly From Space,” “Zombie Ants,” “Mongolian Death Worm.” Claybourne sprinkles multiple-choice pop quizzes throughout for changes of pace.
A rich source of terrors both real and manufactured, equally effective in broad daylight or beneath the bedcovers. (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2841-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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In a large, handsome format, Tarnowska offers six tales plus an abbreviated version of the frame story, retold in formal but contemporary language and sandwiched between a note on the Nights’ place in her childhood in Lebanon and a page of glossary and source notes. Rather than preserve the traditional embedded structure and cliffhanger cutoffs, she keeps each story discrete and tones down the sex and violence. This structure begs the question of why Shahriyar lets Shahrazade [sic] live if she tells each evening’s tale complete, but it serves to simplify the reading for those who want just one tale at a time. Only the opener, “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” is likely to be familiar to young readers; in others a prince learns to control a flying “Ebony Horse” by “twiddling” its ears, contending djinn argue whether “Prince Kamar el Zaman [or] Princess Boudour” is the more beautiful (the prince wins) and in a Cinderella tale a “Diamond Anklet” subs for the glass slipper. Hénaff’s stylized scenes of domed cityscapes and turbaned figures add properly whimsical visual notes to this short but animated gathering. (Folktales. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84686-122-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Barefoot
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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