From his birth in Ulm—a spread of rooftops with one speech bubble: “Waaaaaa”—to his early adulthood, Einstein’s childhood and youth are humanely and humorously depicted. As the title indicates, the narrative focuses on its subject’s oddness, describing both his outbursts of anger and his capacity for single-minded concentration. Einstein emerges as a singular boy, one whose brilliance was masked by poor performance in school. There is no real attempt to explain Einstein’s theorems, delivering just enough to serve as an introduction for primary graders. Illustrations are mostly classic Brown: loose ink-and-watercolor cartoons in a muted palette emphasize Einstein as a lone, brooding figure. Two remarkable illustrations, however, give the reader a glimpse into Einstein’s brain: first, a tiny Einstein gazes up at a swirling array of geometric shapes—“a wonderwork to him”—and second, Einstein pushes a pram against a surreal backdrop that conceptually joins the structure of the atom to the warping of space and time. Kids won’t need to understand relativity to appreciate Einstein’s passage from lonely oddball to breathtaking genius. An author’s note and bibliography fill out this terrific package. (Picture book/biography. 6-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-49298-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
An earnest but energetic tribute to diversity, done up with postmodern arrays of smiling, stylized, lozenge-headed children paired to a rollicking celebration of: “Your coffee and cream skin, / your warm cocoa dream skin . . . / Your chocolate chip, double dip sundae supreme skin! / Your marshmallow treat skin, / your spun sugar sweet skin . . . / your cherry topped, candy dropped, frosting complete skin.” Tyler also urges readers to think about the commonality of “The skin that you laugh in; / the skin that you cry in; / the skin that you look to / the sky and ask, ‘Why?’ in.” Though he changes his tone and plies a verbal mallet to drive his point home in the last several verses, the earlier wordplay more than compensates—while glimpses of one child in a wheelchair, and another held by a biracial couple, expand the general theme to encompass more than skin color alone. A sonically playful, if just a bit overlong, alternative to Sheila Hamanaka’s All the Colors of the Earth (1994). (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-9759580-0-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chicago Children’s Museum/IPG
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story feels a bit contrived, but Ada will be a welcome addition to the small circle of science-loving girls in the...
Using science and technology, third-grader Ada Lace kicks off her new series by solving a mystery even with her leg in a cast.
Temporarily housebound after a badly executed bungee jump, Ada uses binoculars to document the ecosystem of her new neighborhood in San Francisco. She records her observations in a field journal, a project that intrigues new friend Nina, who lives nearby. When they see that Ms. Reed’s dog, Marguerite, is missing, they leap to the conclusion that it has been stolen. Nina does the legwork and Ada provides the technology for their search for the dognapper. Story-crafting takes a back seat to scene-setting in this series kickoff that introduces the major players. As part of the series formula, science topics and gadgetry are integrated into the stories and further explained in a “Behind the Science” afterword. This installment incorporates drones, a wireless camera, gecko gloves, and the Turing test as well as the concept of an ecosystem. There are no ethnic indicators in the text, but the illustrations reveal that Ada, her family, and bratty neighbor Milton are white; Nina appears to be Southeast Asian; and Mr. Peebles, an inventor who lives nearby, is black.
The story feels a bit contrived, but Ada will be a welcome addition to the small circle of science-loving girls in the chapter-book world. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8599-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
