A lavish array of big, bright, close-up photos of lush desert flowers and scaly or many-legged creatures will entice young naturalists to dip into this quick visit to the Sonoran Desert. The text isn’t likely to draw nearly as much notice, though it does have its moments: “We look around and find the lizard’s little black droppings. They crumble as you pick them up—they are made of nothing but the digested remains of dead ants!” The author, a BBC cameraman, opens with one spread on deserts of the world and a second that tallies proper gear for brief outings, then takes young readers out into the scrub for illustrated encounters with a nesting hummingbird, cacti (“Plants that Bite”), a Gila monster, and other wildlife. After side visits to the Grand Canyon and unidentified cliff dwellings, he closes with warnings about environmental threats. Less a specific travelogue than a series of cursory field notes and generalities (“Native Americans are very skilled at using the plants that grow in the desert as medicines”), this companion to Tim Knight’s Journey Into Africa (not reviewed) and Journey Into the Rain Forest (2001) is designed more for armchair travelers than readers with a serious or assignment-driven interest in desert ecosystems. (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-515777-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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
In an entry in the Turning Point Inventions series, Wallace invites readers to consider the drawbacks of earlier forms of artificial daylight, from wooden torches to arc lamps, then retraces Thomas Edison’s intense, deliberate search for a practical electric light. Edison, inspired by a book of science experiments to become an inventor, combined a searching intellect with bulldog stubbornness, and can be credited not just with the light bulb itself, but also with the far more difficult accomplishment of engineering public acceptance of electricity in order to create a market for his invention. As much a readable character portrait as it is an account of the origin of a now-ubiquitous widget, Wallace’s book is generously illustrated with contemporary black- and-white and full-color photographs and views, and capped by a fold-out look at a lightbulb’s parts and assembly. Illuminating, of course. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82816-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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