Fun and enlightenment for young experimenters working alone, with partners, or in groups.
An array of simple demonstrations designed to give budding eco-activists an understanding of how energy is stored, transferred, used responsibly, and recycled.
Developed by the National Energy Education Development Project and demonstrated here by a cast of dozens of young children—roughly evenly split between girls and boys but the substantial majority presenting as white—the low-cost projects range from measuring shadows and charting temperature changes to constructing a solar cooker in a pizza box, creating an inventory of home-appliance energy needs, and competitively “mining” chocolate chips from cookies, then trying to reconstruct the cookies. Each entry comes with a materials list, clear, step-by-step directions with color photos, safety and potential-mess alerts, and difficulty ratings that range from “No Sweat!” (meaning doable by one person) to “Grab a Crew Member!”—for group activities, it’s “All Hands On Deck!” Each concludes with a nontechnical explanation of the physical principles involved, and many feature suggestions for further tinkering with materials or variables.
Fun and enlightenment for young experimenters working alone, with partners, or in groups. (glossary, index, websites) (Nonfiction. 6-10)Pub Date: July 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63159-250-8
Page Count: 147
Publisher: Quarto
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
An inspiring and definitely underrecognized role model.
A young Black woman revolutionizes warship design for the U.S. Navy.
Swanson skips most of her subject’s private life to focus on her engineering career, which was inspired by a childhood tour of a WWII submarine in 1943 and culminated in the first naval ship to be entirely designed by computer. Taking to heart her mother’s lesson that she could “learn anything, do anything, and be anything,” Montague defied rules and conventions to take shop in high school, advance from clerk typist for the Navy to ad hoc operator of the early UNIVAC computer, finally earn reluctant admission to the Naval Ship Engineering Center, and head a software-development team so underfunded that she had to recruit her mother and 3-year-old son to ensure that she met her deadline. Montague went on to a long and distinguished career. As she told the author in 2017 (she died in 2018, which goes unmentioned among the closing tally of later honors and awards), she wanted to be remembered for her achievements, not as the first woman, nor the first Black woman, but as the first person to create what she did. As she proceeds from pigtails to gray-haired eminence in Jamison’s illustrations, Montague’s lively, intelligent gaze shines out. Aside from one group portrait of her racially diverse design team, she poses either with other brown-skinned female colleagues or with dismissive, oblivious, and/or astonished white men.
An inspiring and definitely underrecognized role model. (author’s note, source list) (Picture-book biography. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780316565486
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
An interesting, absorbing browser.
Aspirationally encyclopedic, this survey covers the pig’s evolution, domestication, characteristics, adaptations, importance as a global food source, appearances in myth, and more.
Bird selects fresh facts. Pigs are resistant to snake venom. They’re as smart as dogs and capable of episodic memory—the ability to learn from past experiences. She’s forthcoming about scatological and reproductive attributes, too: Across cultures, the omnivorous pig has played a role as a household waste recycler, including of excrement. A “Facts of Life” section includes details about mating behaviors, the shape of a boar’s penis, and piglets’ growth stages. The rectum and anus figure in an anatomical illustration; Bird asserts that a “full-grown hog will produce six and a half pounds of manure a day.” She cheerfully addresses young readers: “Here’s a fact that may surprise you: pigs can swim!” Several spreads reveal the international array of meat products derived from the pig. “Everything but the Squeal” examines how collagen, bristles, skin, and even heart valves are utilized in industrial production and medicine. Pintonato’s illustrations vacillate between realistic details and fanciful tableaux. In an anthropomorphized spread about pig illnesses, several hospital beds contain pigs attended by health care workers. Additional sections include pigs in pop culture and as pets; thumbnails highlight 20 of the species’s more than 500 breeds. A table of contents is of marginal utility; the project entirely lacks indexing, documentation, or readers’ resources.
An interesting, absorbing browser. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61689-989-9
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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