A compact but cogent tribute to a single voice for change that now leads a rising chorus.
The origin story of the teenage climate change superhero.
Once, as she puts it, “the invisible girl in the back who doesn’t say anything,” Thunberg has, over just the last two years, become a major young presence in the environmental movement, inspiring “Friday school strikes” worldwide and challenging governing bodies to get off the stick: “I want you to panic,” she told the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is.” Skipping Thunberg’s personal history aside from characterizing her as one who “could think about one thing for a long, long time” (an ability Thunberg associates with her Asperger’s diagnosis, unnamed here), Winter pithily retraces the course of her transformation. She begins with a teacher’s lecture on climate change and a period of intense reading and video watching and then goes on to show how Thunberg’s lonely Friday picket outside Stockholm’s Parliament building gains local, then international, support. The illustrations, equally spare, often place the white teenager front and center before culminating in a double-page spread filled with children of diverse hues and styles of dress holding up signs reading “Don’t Burn MY Future” and like urgent messages, followed by a direct question in big, cut-out letters: “WHAT WILL YOU DO?” As one sign puts it, “There Is No Planet B” for any of us.
A compact but cogent tribute to a single voice for change that now leads a rising chorus. (source notes) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6778-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2019
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An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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