An alphabetic celebration of the various sights and attractions of Washington, D.C., falls victim to a fuzzy definition of its audience. Melmed (Fright Night Flight, p. 1229, etc.) tidily organizes the capital from A (Air and Space Museum) to Z (National Zoo), describing each attraction in rhyming couplets and further explicating specific features in teeny prose print. Thus F is accompanied by both “Who searches for the Ten Most Wanted / And faces terrorists, undaunted? / Who’ll ambush the most clever spy / or solve a crime? The FBI!” and “Forensic scientists at the FBI can enlarge fingerprints found at a crime scene and search through their computer data banks to find a match.” Lessac’s (On the Same Day in March, not reviewed, etc.) cheery folk-arty illustrations present thumbnail details with as much energy as broad landscapes teeming with happy multiethnic throngs. The illustrations work well with the prose explications, and the level of detail provided by both will delight older children who can get past the young-seeming format and who have the background necessary to provide historical/civic context. But the verse, which never rises above the level of doggerel, is way out of sync with the prose. It insults the readers who would be captivated by the prose and frequently fails to illuminate sufficiently its subjects for younger children. An attractive package that tries to be too many things to too many people. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-688-17561-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
Between portrait photos taken almost nine decades apart, Steig crustily introduces his Mom, his Pop, and his childhood world—a world where “there were almost no electric lights, cars or telephones—and definitely no TV.” Like his prose, his cartoons are sketchy and childlike, passing with a turn of the page from a gory, imagined battlefield scene to views of the janitor’s tough-looking dog and other neighborhood pets. He barely shows or mentions siblings, friends, or his Bronx neighborhood—and even younger viewers will notice that, despite the title, many of his figures are hatless. So what will children get from this? Next to that whippersnapper James Stevenson’s When I Was Nine (1986), but still distant, generation, not much more than the bare hint that Steig, too, was young. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-009700-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
From the woolly mammoth to the Indricotherium, the largest land mammal ever, paleontologist Brown describes ten extraordinary, but now extinct, mammals, plus the surviving Homo sapien [sic]. Each double-page spread includes a colored illustration of the mammal in its environment, pronunciation of its name and a short description, usually emphasizing its eating habits. The last page illustrates and describes the work of paleontologists, although that word is not used. An author’s note explains the time covered in this survey, which is ordered for dramatic effect, not for chronology. This is straightforward information, presented in an interesting and accessible package for developing readers, although they might find the table of contents more helpful if all the pages were numbered. In a series aimed at offering high-interest stories, this more than fills the bill, and is a welcome accompaniment to The Day the Dinosaurs Died (May 2006) by the same team. (Nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-053053-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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