This America at Work entry features cartoon illustrations of a smiling family on a trip “out east” to a Junior Miners’ hockey tournament. The mother works in a molybdenum mine, the father works in a steel mill, and parental offers to take their twins to work meet with great approval. Even readers unfamiliar with the series may surmise, rightly, that this is going to be a wordy ride through material that may or may not be useful in writing school reports. Cutaway charts intended to support the hackneyed premise do little to clarify the goings on in an underground mine; two miners in hard hats who are “making the roof safe,” for example, shore up a shaft with what appear to be automatic weapons with tiny flying buttresses set on the shaft’s floor. The topic-driven trip includes visits to a steel mill, an airplane ride, an oil well, a toxic dump, a picnic in a park that was once a coal pit, and ends in a hockey arena, with the kids asking all the right questions to keep the facts flowing. They count things made from steel or oil in an “interactivity” befitting the automaton-like nature of progeny who actually let their mother get away with lecturing, “At a smelter, the bits of molybdenum ore are heated and refined to form a powder of pure molybdenum.” (index) (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55074-508-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This latest Froggy title (Froggy Goes to School, 1996, etc.) is utterly unfocused, with the star careening from soccer dolt to Mr. Superkick. Froggy’s team has a big game coming up with the Wild Things, and he is trying to remember the mantra his father, and assistant coach, taught him: “Head it! Boot it! Knee it! Shoot it! But don’t use your hands!” But illegally touching the ball seems to be the least of Froggy’s worries; distraction is his problem. He is so busy turning cartwheels, tying his shoes, and more, that the only time he makes contact with the ball is when it bounces off his head by mistake. Then, when the Wild Things make a breakaway, Froggy has some dazzling moves to avert a score, but forgetfully grabs the ball at the last second. The other team gets a penalty kick, converts it, but then Froggy makes a field-long kick for a game-winning score. London forces Froggy into too many guises—the fool, the hero, the klutz, the fancy dancer—but none of them stick. Remkiewicz’s illustrations have charm; it is in their appeal that this book will find its audience. (Picture book. 2-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88257-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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