Simple amusement and simple instruction add up to a winning combination.
Koll and Mills explore how numbers help us get into outer space.
Wait...please retake your seats. This is not higher math—imaginary numbers and the calculations for Higgs boson and the like—but some fairly everyday math (though, beware, a protractor makes an appearance) used in the flight of a rocket into space. Using the dramatic coloration and panels of a comic book, the book offers brief introductions to the history of rocketry, the shapes and sizes of rockets, and the countdown checkoff sequence. Some material is introduced that leaves too much unsaid—“Scientists measure the weight of things in units called newtons.” Fig Newtons? Isaac Newtons?—but for the most part, everything is crystal clear. But the guy who runs away with the show is black astronaut Mike, who acts as tour guide to a girl trainee of Asian descent and administers quizzes and simple mathematical problems, most of which can be done in your head. “Round the height of each building and rocket to the nearest 10 feet,” or, bringing your own high-tech instrument into play, “Use a protractor to measure the angles the rocket has leaned over in Steps 3, 4, and 5.” Additional, somewhat more challenging questions are boxed off to the side. Answers and a glossary, thankfully, appear at the end of the book.
Simple amusement and simple instruction add up to a winning combination. (index) (Graphic nonfiction. 7-14)Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60992-729-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: QEB Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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