A decent selection of inventions for patient kids who enjoy tinkering.
A compilation of zany Rube Goldberg machines for the dedicated aspiring inventor.
This book, co-authored by George, Rube Goldberg’s granddaughter, and Rube Goldberg Machine Contest champion Umperovitch, offers suggestions for everyday inventions in the spirit of Goldberg’s time-consuming machines that do simple tasks. The introduction describes simple machines and types of energy and offers tips and tricks for building. Each invention is broken down over several spreads that cover a description of the task it will perform, step-by-step illustrations and instructions, and a blank ruled page for readers’ building and testing notes. The projects are divided into chapters organized by level of difficulty from “Beginner (3-step)” to “Advanced (7+step),” with names such as (in increasing level of difficulty) “Apply a Band-Aid,” “Pour a Glass of Water,” “Dunk a Cookie,” and “Serve Fresh Popcorn.” The extensive backmatter includes facts about Goldberg, safety tips, suggestions for alternate materials to use, a glossary, and further resources. Steckley’s full-color artwork is fun and engaging and clearly depicts how the machines are supposed to work. While it’s debatable whether most of these projects will function in the real world, even with repeated tries, creative inventors may enjoy trying them anyway or coming up with their own improvements.
A decent selection of inventions for patient kids who enjoy tinkering. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781419761256
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A book about engineering notable mostly for its illustrations of diverse characters. (Board book. 1-3)
Babies and engineers have more in common than you think.
In this book, Alexander highlights the unlikely similarities between babies and engineers. Like engineers, babies ask questions, enjoy building, and learn from their mistakes. Black’s bold, colorful illustrations feature diverse babies and both male- and female-presenting adult characters with a variety of skin tones and hair colors, effectively demonstrating that engineers can be any race or either gender. (Nonbinary models are a little harder to see.) The story ends with a reassurance to the babies in the book that “We believe in you!” presumably implying that any child can be an engineer. The end pages include facts about different kinds of engineers and the basic process used by all engineers in their work. Although the book opens with a rhythmic rhyming couplet, the remaining text lacks the same structure and pattern, making it less entertaining to read. Furthermore, while some of the comparisons between babies and engineers are both clever and apt, others—such as the idea that babies know where to look for answers—are flimsier. The book ends with a text-heavy spread of facts about engineering that, bereft of illustrations, may not hold children’s attention as well as the previous pages. Despite these flaws, on its best pages, the book is visually stimulating, witty, and thoughtful.
A book about engineering notable mostly for its illustrations of diverse characters. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-31223-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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