by Editors of Sports Illustrated for Kids ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2018
Immersive, though the pitch is definitely at browsing dippers and flippers.
A wide-ranging sampler of records, stats, stars, highlights, lowlights, sidelights, and general baseball talk.
Modeled on Gramling’s Football Fanbook (2017), the topical chapters each offer assortments of quick-fix descriptions or anecdotes interspersed with plenty of diagrams, spot art, and color photos of players in action. The target audience is hard to define, as readers are expected to know already about steroids, racism, the Dead Ball era, and the significance of an asterisk on a record such as the number of home runs in a season or career. Bafflingly, though, they’re assumed not to know what a “check swing” (sic) is, nor how to practice batting and catching alone at home. Still, along with major league team-by-team “Tidbits” and instructions for keeping score, there are instructions for shelling sunflower seeds with one’s teeth (the last demonstrated by a girl with brown skin and black braids). Likewise, a section pairing stars of the past and present offers intriguing comparisons; souvenir-ball and autograph seekers will find sensible advice; and hot-dog lovers will slaver over lovingly detailed descriptions of the toppings on, for instance, the classic “Dodger Dog” or the “Cracker Jack and Mac Dog” available at Pirates games.
Immersive, though the pitch is definitely at browsing dippers and flippers. (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68330-069-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Liberty Street/Time Inc. Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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by Brian Selznick illustrated by Brian Selznick photographed by Jaap Buitendijk ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Marketing froth, mostly, but with tidbits for budding fans of cinema's history.
Timed just to precede the scheduled release of the film version of Selznick’s Caldecott-winner, a chubby compendium of stills interspersed with background notes and interviews.
Easy-to-digest single spreads of narrative text are embedded in color photos of sets, cast members and crew (plus occasional illustrations from the original book for comparison) in a manner mimicking the design of the original. Selznick opens with stage-setting comments on his characters and inspirations, then goes on to introduce 40 people involved in the project, from director Martin Scorsese to the lead and supporting actors, set designers, script writer, technical staff and even an “On Set Magician.” He, Scorsese and scholar David Serlin also tuck in capsule historical essays on Paris in 1931, automatons and early French filmmakers—particularly Georges Méliès, whose significant role in the book has evidently been even further magnified for the screen. Readers are expected to be familiar with the tale’s plot, and the interviews are threaded with bland clichés (producer Graham King was “enchanted by Brian Selznick’s book. Immediately we thought it would be a beautiful story for Martin Scorsese to create into a piece of cinema”) and name-check references to old movies. At least the photos provide a sense of how the cast and film will look, and Selznick’s account of how he unexpectedly became an extra in the final scene makes a lively closing bit.
Marketing froth, mostly, but with tidbits for budding fans of cinema's history. (place, movie and website lists, thumbnail biographies of cast and crew) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-545-33155-5
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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by Michael Glassbourg ; illustrated by Jeff Kulak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 2013
Readers may come away knowing how to talk the talk, as the title promises, but little more.
A quick overview of how movies are made, offering encouragement and generic advice rather than specific information.
Glassbourg, a veteran instructor of film and TV production, breaks the process of creating a movie down into simplified steps—from gathering ideas, creating a script, and learning how to think pictorially with still photography and storyboarding to production management, editing and marketing. Unfortunately, though he drops big names, uses recent and classic films as examples, and gathers comments from working professionals in the industry, the visuals are not stills or shots of actual sets or equipment but retro, graphic-style figures done in a limited range of solid hues that add color but only rarely any useful detail. He presents an almost dizzying array of film-related occupations, but his brief notes on what such arcane folk as location managers, production coordinators, Foley editors, key grips and other specialists do are unlikely to enlighten readers. Moreover, the vague references to CGI (confusingly dubbed “VFX,” which is actually an older, broader term encompassing more than just digital wizardry), electronic press kits, sound design, social media and other topics similarly just skim the surface.
Readers may come away knowing how to talk the talk, as the title promises, but little more. (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-926973-84-5
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
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