Worthy role models all.
Portraits of 16 bright lights in the scientific firmament, with particular focus on some of their lesser-known quirks and achievements.
Nearly half of Stabler’s selected stars are men. Grouping entries by general field, he blasts off with NASA numbers whiz Katherine Johnson and pulls up to a close with Stephen Hawking. In between he highlights Isaac Newton’s rodent-powered windmill, Benjamin Franklin’s swim fins and his views on swimming, Marie Curie’s youthful talent for practical jokes, “Bad Albert” Einstein’s very first words (“The soup is too hot!”), Ada Lovelace’s design for a steam-powered flying horse, Temple Grandin’s Hug Box, and so on, in an apparent effort to make luminaries often portrayed as larger than life a bit closer to human. If his claim that they were all “just ordinary kids who were curious about the world around them” doesn’t always hold water (Johnson, for instance, started high school at 10, and Rachel Carson was earning money as a professional writer at 15), young readers will at least get reassuring glimpses of slow starters such as Einstein and Hawking (who didn’t learn to read until he was 8) as well as stars who rose past barriers of race (Johnson, George Washington Carver), gender (Vera Rubin), and disability (Grandin, Hawking) to shine. Lighthearted portraits from Syed on every page feature stylized but recognizable versions of each subject with jokey comments or punchlines.
Worthy role models all. (source list, index) (Collective biography. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68369-074-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats.
Why should grown-ups get all the historical, scientific, athletic, cinematic, and artistic glory?
Choosing exemplars from both past and present, Mitchell includes but goes well beyond Alexander the Great, Anne Frank, and like usual suspects to introduce a host of lesser-known luminaries. These include Shapur II, who was formally crowned king of Persia before he was born, Indian dancer/professional architect Sheila Sri Prakash, transgender spokesperson Jazz Jennings, inventor Param Jaggi, and an international host of other teen or preteen activists and prodigies. The individual portraits range from one paragraph to several pages in length, and they are interspersed with group tributes to, for instance, the Nazi-resisting “Swingkinder,” the striking New York City newsboys, and the marchers of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Mitchell even offers would-be villains a role model in Elagabalus, “boy emperor of Rome,” though she notes that he, at least, came to an awful end: “Then, then! They dumped his remains in the Tiber River, to be nommed by fish for all eternity.” The entries are arranged in no evident order, and though the backmatter includes multiple booklists, a personality quiz, a glossary, and even a quick Braille primer (with Braille jokes to decode), there is no index. Still, for readers whose fires need lighting, there’s motivational kindling on nearly every page.
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats. (finished illustrations not seen) (Collective biography. 10-13)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-751813-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Puffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
The author of The Snake Scientist (not reviewed) takes the reader along on another adventure, this time to the Bay of Bengal, between India and Bangladesh to the Sundarbans Tiger Preserve in search of man-eating tigers. Beware, he cautions, “Your study subject might be trying to eat you!” The first-person narrative is full of helpful warnings: watch out for the estuarine crocodiles, “the most deadly crocodiles in the world” and the nine different kinds of dangerous sharks, and the poisonous sea snakes, more deadly than the cobra. Interspersed are stories of the people who live in and around the tiger preserve, information on the ecology of the mangrove swamp, myths and legends, and true life accounts of man-eating tigers. (Fortunately, these tigers don’t eat women or children.) The author is clearly on the side of the tigers as she states: “Even if you added up all the people that sick tigers were forced to eat, you wouldn’t get close to the number of tigers killed by people.” She introduces ideas as to why Sundarbans tigers eat so many people, including the theory, “When they attack people, perhaps they are trying to protect the land that they own. And maybe, as the ancient legend says, the tiger really is watching over the forest—for everyone’s benefit.” There are color photographs on every page, showing the landscape, people, and a variety of animals encountered, though glimpses of the tigers are fleeting. The author concludes with some statistics on tigers, information on organizations working to protect them, and a brief bibliography and index. The dramatic cover photo of the tiger will attract readers, and the lively prose will keep them engaged. An appealing science adventure. (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-07704-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
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