Beautiful fluff with little substance.
A who’s who of the queer, iconic, and fabulous.
Readers looking for a casual introduction to a diverse selection of members of the LGBTQ+ community (and their allies) will enjoy this compilation of dozens of individuals, a handful of whom are discussed collectively. The names range from the exceptionally well known—such as singer and actor Lady Gaga, drag superstar Shea Couleé, and activist Sylvia Rivera—to icons who may be new to them, like Black plus-size model Dexter Mayfield, Black British activist Lady Phyll, and Salvadoran American intersex writer/actor/director River Gallo. The book also includes a few sections offering advice, such as “How To Be a Support to a Queer Person” and “Ways To Celebrate Pride Season All Year Round.” The bold graphics and colorful artwork are sure to grab readers’ attention, although the likenesses of the portraits vary in degree of verisimilitude. Readers seeking traditional biographical sketches will definitely need to look elsewhere for solid facts, including birth dates, death dates, and sources of additional information; they may also feel bemused by the prominently featured opinions of the author. As a curated list of one individual’s heroes, the book is good; as anything else, it’s less than iconic.
Beautiful fluff with little substance. (organizations, helplines, resources, sources) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-52135-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest.
A quick history of hacking, from the “phone phreaks” of the 1960s to today’s attacks on commercial data stores large and small.
Drawing solely from previously published reports and documents, the authors paint an alarming picture (“The internet has become a cyber criminal playground”) as they trace the growth of increasingly sophisticated digital attacks on personal, corporate and government data systems. Though they rightly point out that many hackers, from early “phreaks” like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on, have been motivated more by the pleasures of creating software or high-tech gear (or, as they acknowledge in the case of Edward Snowden, idealism) than criminal intent, most of the incidents they describe involve theft or espionage. Noting that attacks can come from anywhere in the world and that malware can be secretly installed not just on computers, but on any number of gadgets, the authors project little hope of keeping our information safe from bad guys. Nor do they offer more than, at best, bare mention of firewalls, encryption, two-step verification, strong passwords and other protective countermeasures. Still, readers will at least come away more aware of the range of hazards, from phishing and ransomware to botnets and distributed denial of service, as well as the huge, rapidly increasing amounts of money and data shadowy entities are raking in.
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest. (source notes, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4677-2512-5
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution.
An exploration of animal intelligence.
Castaldo opens with a discussion of brainpower before summarizing historical thinking on animal cognition and then presenting evidence of it, in the form of a dizzying array of experiments on such subtopics as decision-making, empathy, a sense of fairness, and communication, among others. Candy-colored pastel shades and striking photographs make flipping the pages a pleasure, but actually reading them is something of a chore. Sidebars often appear out of sequence with the text and are of varying levels of utility, as is also the case with photo captions. Low points include a reference to the author’s middle school report on dolphins and a photograph of a dolphin alone in a tank that’s labeled, “A dolphin at the National Aquarium is studied by cognitive researchers.” Chapters are broken up into subtopics with catchy headings (“The Hive Brain”; “Emo Rats”) except when they are not, as with a relatively lengthy discussion of interspecies communication that wanders from bonobos to dolphins to Peter Gabriel to orangutans. The book’s sense of its audience is uncertain. Profligate use of exclamation points and simplistic “what would you do” scenarios seem geared to younger readers, while the un-glossed use of such terms as “habeas corpus” and “prosocial,” as well as a conceptually complex model of brain processing, assumes a fairly sophisticated audience.
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution. (resources, glossary, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-63335-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
