Kids will close this book energized and empowered; this has great potential for classrooms and youth groups as well as...
At a time when youth activism is at its peak, many young people are searching for ways to best contribute to making the world a better place.
The Moyles offer here a change-agent manual that acts as an inspirational coach, providing ideas for young people who want to take action for change, no matter how limited they may feel in their ability to access inner and outer resources. There is a primer, “The Body Politic,” which summarizes how teens can educate themselves and influence the way our political system works. This section offers a list of doable actions, from making videos and starting a club to taking strategic actions to boycott businesses whose practices work against equality. “The Living Room Conversation Guide” is a rubric that guides group discussion for youth and is also a great lesson idea for teachers, who can access this model for their classrooms via a provided URL. The last section of the book features a variety of affordable craft projects, ready-made templates, and postcards geared to enhance civic community projects in any neighborhood. Ample photographs of diverse, enthusiastic youth anchor the lively design. The tone throughout is chatty and positive, offering necessary context when appropriate—the explanation of the progressive, libertarian, and conservative axes of opinion, for instance, is clear and very useful.
Kids will close this book energized and empowered; this has great potential for classrooms and youth groups as well as individual activists. (Nonfiction. 10-15)Pub Date: April 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63322-507-7
Page Count: 131
Publisher: Walter Foster Jr.
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Barnard’s brave effort to cram such an immense subject into 40 pages leads to some debatable claims. He opens with a sweeping history of Muslim expansion (“Early Muslims knew they had a lot of catching up to do to equal or surpass the great civilizations that preceded and surrounded them”) and continues generalizing throughout (“Until the twentieth century, most buildings in most cities owed much of their look to Islam”). Single-topic spreads cover the development of Arabic calligraphy and the mass production of paper, revolutions in mathematics and medicine, artistic and architectural motifs, astronomy and navigation, plus the importation of new foodstuffs, ideas (e.g., marching bands, hospitals) and technology to the West. The array of street scenes, portraits, maps, still-lifes and diagrams add visual appeal but sometimes fall into irrelevancy. Labored stylistic tics stale (the Caliph’s pigeon post was “the email of the day,” the astrolabe was “the GPS device of its day,” the translation of Classical texts was “the Human Genome Project of its day”). The author winds down with a discussion of how the dismissive attitude of Renaissance “Petrarchists” led to a general loss of appreciation for Muslim culture and scholarship, then finishes abruptly with a page of adult-level “Further Reading.” Enthusiastic, yes; judicious and well-organized, not so much. (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-84072-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Superb versions for reading alone or for sharing with audiences large or small.
Oft-told tales retold with uncommon verve and outfitted with resplendent Art Deco–style portraits.
Napoli opens with the rise of the “mother force” Gaia to bring order to the whirling elements of Chaos and closes with the devastation of the Trojan War (“the doing of gods with too much time on their hands”). In between, she introduces over two dozen immortals and heroes—including Hestia, Helios and Selene among the better-known Olympians and their mortal offspring. While somehow managing to keep all the sex inexplicit (Aphrodite is born, for instance, from the “foam” produced by an unspecified body part ripped from her father Uranus), she lays out clear family lines. She pays close attention to her narrative’s tone and sound, capturing the nature of each god or mortal with vivid turns of phrase: Peaceable Hestia considers Zeus a “frightful maniac,” Orion grows up to become “an insufferably pompous nitwit” and Selene is left to pine, “silver sweet, and soft, and sad,” for her eternally sleeping lover, Endymion. Applying rippling strokes of intense color, Balit opens with a shimmering family tree of Olympians, heads each chapter with a stylized full-body image of a mythological figure with associated emblems and symbols and also contributes interior illustrations and thumbnail portraits for the closing summary cast list.
Superb versions for reading alone or for sharing with audiences large or small. (Mythology. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4263-0844-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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