It’s a sweeping overview, but it’s too bland and disorganized to invite repeat flights.
A swift tour of our planet’s surface and the forces that work changes on it.
In painted illustrations, Clohosy Cole sends five young explorers zigzagging from one generic locale to another in no obvious order. They learn the rudiments of latitude and longitude, trek through deserts and other biomes, witness both a tornado and an earthquake, parachute from a plane as a rocket roars past, look out over a river and a coastline, peer into a deep-sea crevasse where two tectonic plates are pulling apart, poke through a huge garbage dump, and finally do some gardening in a futuristic city. Nelson’s easily digestible definitions and explanatory notes, many of which are accompanied by smaller schematic images, are scattered over the scenes in inset blocks. With so much territory to cover it’s not surprising that the level of specific detail is, at best, ankle deep, but the author covers the geophysical basics accurately enough. Erupting volcanoes and cute rainforest monkeys notwithstanding, though, the art is conspicuously lacking in drama or wonder, and the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of the single-topic spreads gives the whole project a perfunctory air. Captions on a detachable fold-out map at the end contain a couple of errors, to boot. Of the five child guides, one is brown-skinned, and the other four are pale.
It’s a sweeping overview, but it’s too bland and disorganized to invite repeat flights. (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78603-062-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
This survey of body systems tries too hard for a broad audience, mixing paragraphs of lines like, “Without bones we would just be bags of goop,” printed in slightly larger type, with brief but specific discussions of osteoblasts, myofibrils, peristalsis and like parts and functions. Seven single or double gatefolds allow the many simple, brightly painted illustrations space to range from thumbnail size to forearm-length. Many of the visuals offer inside and outside views of a multicultural cast—of children, by and large, though the sexual organs are shown on headless trunks and the final picture provides a peek inside a pregnant mother. Even if younger readers don’t stumble over the vocabulary while older ones reject the art as babyish, this isn’t going to make the top shelf; information is presented in a scattershot way, the text and pictures don’t consistently correspond—three muscles needed to kick a soccer ball are named but not depicted, for instance, and an entire tongue is labeled “taste bud”—and the closing resource list is both print only and partly adult. (glossary, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4027-7091-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
It’s not exactly an untold tale, but this new telling is worth the read.
A solid new entry in Mann’s exemplary tour of the modern world’s architectural wonders (The Taj Mahal, 2008, etc.).
Even sticking to the basic facts, as the author does, the story of how Lady Liberty was conceived, constructed and bestowed makes a compelling tale. Pointing to the disparate long-term outcomes of the American and French revolutions to explain why the U.S. system of government became so admired in France, Mann takes the statue from Edouard Laboulaye’s pie-in-the-sky proposal at a dinner party in 1865 to the massive opening ceremonies in 1886. Along the way, she highlights the techniques that sculptor Bartholdi used to scale up his ambitious model successfully and the long struggle against public indifference and skepticism on both sides of the Atlantic to fund both the monument itself and its base. Witschonke supplements an array of period photos and prints with full-page or larger painted reconstructions of Bartholdi’s studio and workshop, of the statue’s piecemeal creation and finally of the Lady herself, properly copper colored as she initially was, presiding over New York’s crowded harbor. As she still does.
It’s not exactly an untold tale, but this new telling is worth the read. (measurements, bibliography, "The New Colossus") (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-931414-43-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Mikaya Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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