A few slips but overall a brisk and witty grab bag of science words and wonders.
From the creators of Why Is Art Full of Naked People? (2016), a set of equally momentous questions in astronomy, physics, biology, and technology—with pithy answers.
Presented in no discernible order, the several dozen questions range from “What is science?” (“Oh nothing much…science is everything, science is everywhere and science is everything that has ever happened in the whole history of time!”) and “What’s inside a black hole?” to “Can things live on my face?” (Yes.) Doyle goes for an equally casual tone in his short answers, and though he tends to wander off on side tracks, along with picking up some dandy vocabulary (“dendrochronology” “oneirology” “spaghettified”), readers with inquiring minds will come away painlessly filled in on a broad variety of topics. This is not to say that Doyle’s facts are always trustworthy—nitrogen is not a mineral, stars do too move, astronauts don’t float in space because the gravity there is lower than on Earth, 44,000 gallons of rocket fuel isn’t enough to “fill up 42,000 cars”—but they are mostly sound enough. The illustrations are a likewise playful combination of decorative motifs and line drawings of white-faced cartoon human figures by Goble and science art, stills from classic films, stock photos (often comical ones), historical images, museum paintings, and old book illustrations.
A few slips but overall a brisk and witty grab bag of science words and wonders. (index, glossary) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-500-65118-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts.
From a Caldecott and Sibert honoree, an invitation to take a mind-expanding journey from the surface of our planet to the furthest reaches of the observable cosmos.
Though Chin’s assumption that we are even capable of understanding the scope of the universe is quixotic at best, he does effectively lead viewers on a journey that captures a sense of its scale. Following the model of Kees Boeke’s classic Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (1957), he starts with four 8-year-old sky watchers of average height (and different racial presentations). They peer into a telescope and then are comically startled by the sudden arrival of an ostrich that is twice as tall…and then a giraffe that is over twice as tall as that…and going onward and upward, with ellipses at each page turn connecting the stages, past our atmosphere and solar system to the cosmic web of galactic superclusters. As he goes, precisely drawn earthly figures and features in the expansive illustrations give way to ever smaller celestial bodies and finally to glimmering swirls of distant lights against gulfs of deep black before ultimately returning to his starting place. A closing recap adds smaller images and additional details. Accompanying the spare narrative, valuable side notes supply specific lengths or distances and define their units of measure, accurately explain astronomical phenomena, and close with the provocative observation that “the observable universe is centered on us, but we are not in the center of the entire universe.”
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts. (afterword, websites, further reading) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4623-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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