by Erica Fyvie ; illustrated by Bill Slavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2018
While the book includes some hard-to-follow diagrams, the content is both approachable and interesting, and it leaves...
This illustrated nonfiction book covers the environmental impacts and life cycles of different familiar materials such as paper, plastic, metals, as well as the less-familiar space waste.
Backed by colorful drawings by Slavin, Fyvie explores eight different materials, describing how they are created, used, and disposed of and/or recycled and how to lessen the effects of waste on the Earth. She appeals to young readers, using approachable topics such as the use of plastics in the manufacture of action figures and dolls. The text is peppered with interesting anecdotes, including one about Paraguay’s children’s “Landfillharmonic” orchestra, which performs music on instruments made of found, recycled objects. The author explains commonplace things readers may not fully understand, such as the recycling number system on plastics, outlined in a handy chart. While amusing, the illustrations look like dated comics, and diagrams of processes are not always so easy to parse. Some include unhelpful exaggerated images, such as a drawing of a worker using a giant U-shaped magnet during the aluminum recycling process. In other instances, what should be an intuitive flowchart becomes a frustrating exercise in following the numbers. The book closes by looking to the future for ways to become a zero-waste world. Heeding its own lesson, the book is printed on 100 percent recycled paper.
While the book includes some hard-to-follow diagrams, the content is both approachable and interesting, and it leaves readers with a sense of responsibility for the Earth’s future. (glossary, index, further information) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77138-078-2
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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by Erica Fyvie ; illustrated by Ian Turner
by Aron Bruhn & illustrated by Joel Ito & Kathleen Kemly ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2010
This survey of body systems tries too hard for a broad audience, mixing paragraphs of lines like, “Without bones we would just be bags of goop,” printed in slightly larger type, with brief but specific discussions of osteoblasts, myofibrils, peristalsis and like parts and functions. Seven single or double gatefolds allow the many simple, brightly painted illustrations space to range from thumbnail size to forearm-length. Many of the visuals offer inside and outside views of a multicultural cast—of children, by and large, though the sexual organs are shown on headless trunks and the final picture provides a peek inside a pregnant mother. Even if younger readers don’t stumble over the vocabulary while older ones reject the art as babyish, this isn’t going to make the top shelf; information is presented in a scattershot way, the text and pictures don’t consistently correspond—three muscles needed to kick a soccer ball are named but not depicted, for instance, and an entire tongue is labeled “taste bud”—and the closing resource list is both print only and partly adult. (glossary, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4027-7091-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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by Melissa Stewart & illustrated by Cynthia Shaw
by Elizabeth Mann & illustrated by Alan Witschonke ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2011
It’s not exactly an untold tale, but this new telling is worth the read.
A solid new entry in Mann’s exemplary tour of the modern world’s architectural wonders (The Taj Mahal, 2008, etc.).
Even sticking to the basic facts, as the author does, the story of how Lady Liberty was conceived, constructed and bestowed makes a compelling tale. Pointing to the disparate long-term outcomes of the American and French revolutions to explain why the U.S. system of government became so admired in France, Mann takes the statue from Edouard Laboulaye’s pie-in-the-sky proposal at a dinner party in 1865 to the massive opening ceremonies in 1886. Along the way, she highlights the techniques that sculptor Bartholdi used to scale up his ambitious model successfully and the long struggle against public indifference and skepticism on both sides of the Atlantic to fund both the monument itself and its base. Witschonke supplements an array of period photos and prints with full-page or larger painted reconstructions of Bartholdi’s studio and workshop, of the statue’s piecemeal creation and finally of the Lady herself, properly copper colored as she initially was, presiding over New York’s crowded harbor. As she still does.
It’s not exactly an untold tale, but this new telling is worth the read. (measurements, bibliography, "The New Colossus") (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-931414-43-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Mikaya Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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by Elizabeth Mann and illustrated by Alan Witschonke
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