by Emily Hawkins ; illustrated by Lucy Letherland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2017
A gallery of diminutive delights—but the appeal is superficial at best.
A little world tour of little things—from the smallest sea horse to the largest model railway.
With a small trim size suitable to the topic and diminutive narrative type to match (the latter not always a good idea, particularly when the background color is dark brown or purple), this gathering offers armchair travelers a small-scale mix of natural and constructed minimarvels on each continent. The 20 entries are placed on introductory and inset maps, and they’re depicted with miniscule exactitude in painted illustrations—many of these featuring a pair of avid young white tourists to show relative size. But for all that readers will come away with a yen to see the world’s smallest teddy bears in South Korea’s Teddy Bear Museum or play minigolf under black lights in Berlin, not to mention understanding the importance of krill to the Antarctic marine ecosystems, as a travel guide it’s all rather arbitrary and rough-hewn. Many creatures and sites appear on the introductory maps but nowhere else; there are no leads to more information about any of the selected wonders; and measurements throughout are in a casual mix of metric and English units.
A gallery of diminutive delights—but the appeal is superficial at best. (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: March 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84780-909-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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by Amy Gallagher ; illustrated by Amy Gallagher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2017
Scanty for a stand-alone guide but definitely a vocabulary enricher.
A playful introduction to bacteria, viruses, fungi, algae, archaea, and protozoa.
Readers are going to need a basic grounding in cytology from the start, as Gallagher drops such terms as “nucleus” and “organelles” into the discourse without defining them and rushes past plasmids without explaining what they are or do. Likewise, though she fits out all of the jelly-bean–like cells and microbes in her lighthearted illustrations with expressive faces—not to mention occasional limbs, fashion accessories, and hair—she rarely includes recognizable biological components. She’s not particularly systematic either, as she mentions four major components of the human immune system but goes on to describe only two. More usefully, along with frequent mentions of how ubiquitous microbes are, her main focus seems to be laying out microbial types and subtypes, from the five shape-related groups of bacteria to the even more ancient archaea (Crenarchaeota, Euryarchaeota, and Korarchaeota), and describing their individual distinctions and how they reproduce. Polysyllabic as some of this content is, the breezy presentation should impart to general students, as well as budding microbiologists, a nodding acquaintance with our single-celled neighbors and residents.
Scanty for a stand-alone guide but definitely a vocabulary enricher. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63411-009-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Thunderstone Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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by Sophy Henn ; illustrated by Sophy Henn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2018
A mixed bag.
Like it or not, size matters, and Henn shows just how important size can be across 17 animal species found around the world.
The organization is scattershot, jumping from animal to animal, but readers and listeners may not mind this as they’re learning a bit about each creature discussed. Nearly every text block ends with an open-ended question or challenge: Can you flap your arms faster than a bee hummingbird’s 80 times per second? Whose tongue is longer, yours or a giraffe’s? Large spreads—each page is 12 inches square—allow this book to be easily seen from the back of the room. Though the book will easily create choruses of “awwww”s, it may also generate a few “uuuummmm”s, as the facts are brief. Readers learn, for instance, that the male rainbow lizard is normally brown but transforms into rainbow hues “to impress female lizards,” but they don’t learn how this happens. Backmatter consists of a relative-size chart of many (not all) of the animals discussed. All measurements are in English units only even though the metric system is the international standard. Henn’s illustrations, which appear to be digitally created, are bright, bold, and welcoming. Readers are greeted by an arrestingly large panda face and bamboo endpapers, but the only information about pandas is in the backmatter. Panda enthusiasts (and those who judge a book by its cover) will be greatly disappointed.
A mixed bag. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-731-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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