Occasionally loses focus but rich in eye-opening facts and eye-candy art.
The eyes have it in Pallotta’s latest playful and informative ABC.
Bersani follows up the spectacular illustrations in Not a Butterfly Alphabet Book (2019) with another set of equally bright, bold, and this time literally eye-catching close-ups to go with Pallotta’s alphabetical assortment of ocular animal facts. Pallotta offers specific observations on the eyesight of creatures from giant squid to spider while also contrasting the general benefits of monocular and binocular vision, describing three types of tears, and casting glances at other vision-related facts, such as a fly’s compound eyes and a python’s thermal sensors. Both author and illustrator tuck in extras, including, for each letter, a thematically related figure of speech like “get some shut-eye” and “to see eye to eye” and a gallery of goofy eyeglasses, and they occasionally dart off topic (“N” is represented by “Night Crawler,” for instance: “They never need to visit an eye doctor!”). The statement that “having no eyesight is called blindness” may be glaringly simplistic, but that’s an isolated blink in a generally illuminating overview. A bulleted list of savvy advice for proper peeper care at the close is worth taking a gander at.
Occasionally loses focus but rich in eye-opening facts and eye-candy art. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-57091-710-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental...
Pollution, energy use, and simply throwing things away have created a worldwide mess that kids can help clean up with an eight-step action plan.
This well-meant offering introduces the idea of the interconnectedness of human activities and the state of our world. We’re all affected by pollution. Our need for energy results in a variety of current problems: unclean air, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns. We should use less. Trash doesn’t vanish; it must be burned or dumped. We should also recycle. This helps save trees, which “eat up pollution.” Colorful, unsophisticated cartoons show a bunny magician who cannot make trash disappear and a diverse array of young people who can. The author’s strong message is undercut by end matter that twice states that “many scientists” consider climate change to be caused by global warming. A National Academy of Sciences survey in 2010 showed an overwhelming consensus: 97 percent. Inspired by her concern for the environment, Kondonassis wrote this when she was unable to find an appropriate book that would explain to her young daughter why she should care. Too bad she missed Kim Michelle Toft’s The World That We Want (2005) or Todd Parr’s The Earth Book (2010).
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental tweets. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61608-588-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete...
A mouse, a bird, and a junkyard frog assemble a car from the ground up—cluing in readers who may be a bit vague on what’s beneath all those hoods…or at least what used to be.
Enlisting his green buddy Hank to supply the parts and feathered Phoebe to draw up the plans, Eli, “king of crazy ideas,” sees his latest project grow from a frame and some miscellaneous loose parts to a nifty blue convertible with a classic 1950s look. At each stage, Sodomka supplies clearly drawn angled or cutaway views with dozens of major components labeled, from “steering knuckle bracket” to “tie rod” and “ball joint.” The gas tank is labeled but seems to be missing, though, and readers who want to know what a “differential” actually does or the purpose of the “indicator switch” are out of luck. Lacey’s claim that an engine “is like the brain of the car” doesn’t bear close examination, either. Moreover, the finished auto isn’t much like most modern cars, as it has no electronic elements, for instance, and is powered by a three-cylinder engine (misleadingly billed as “regular”) quaintly fed by a long-obsolescent carburetor. With an auto under their belts (and with similar oversimplification), Eli’s “Scrap Pack” goes on to an even more ambitious enterprise in How to Build a Plane. In both volumes, closer looks at selected systems or related topics follow the storyline’s happy conclusion, and each broad trial-and-error step in the construction is recapped at the end.
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete pictures. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63322-041-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Quarto
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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