Strong appeals to the sense of adventure as well as the typical other five.
Visits to 11 of the most extreme places on Earth—and beyond.
Inviting intrepid young explorers to pack up survival gear and follow along, Stewart-Sharpe leads a zigzag tour that begins in the heat-blasted Danakil Depression of Ethiopia, ends on Mars, and in between roves from the subterranean Krubera Cave in (the country of) Georgia and the benthic Challenger Deep to volcanic Zavodovski Island (“The world’s stinkiest place”). Along with proposing such feats as sky-diving to the top of Mount Everest and hauling a pulk (sled) across Antarctica, the author name-drops dozens of actual people, including many with disabilities, who have done the same and also calls attention to each locale’s distinctive sights, sounds, scents, sensations, and tastes. Cushley provides such helpful images as a tally of useful supplies but goes mostly for montage-style outdoor scenes populated by local wildlife and small, racially diverse visitors. Even seasoned armchair travelers will not only encounter some unfamiliar places, but are likely to find all of them more memorable for the sensory notes about, for instance, the taste of piranha (“weirdly ‘muddy’ ”), the smell of a lightning storm over Lake Maracaibo, or the feeling of a venomous mulga snake gliding over a boot in the Australian Outback. A reminder to take care of our planet plus the leading question “But where to next?” add suitable closing notes.
Strong appeals to the sense of adventure as well as the typical other five. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781623544195
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
An unpalatable mess left half-baked by an ill-conceived gimmick.
Modeling a classic nursery song, a black hole does what a black hole does.
Ferrie reverses the song’s customary little-to-large order and shows frequent disregard for such niceties as actual rhymes and regular metrics. Also playing fast and loose with internal logic, she tracks a black hole as it cumulatively chows down, Pac-Man–style, on the entire universe, then galaxies (“It left quite a cavity after swallowing that galaxy”), stars, planets, cells, molecules, atoms, neutrons, and finally the ultimate: “There was a black hole that swallowed a quark. / That’s all there was. / And now it’s dark.” Then, in a twist that limits the audience for this feature to aging hippies and collectors of psychedelic posters, the author enjoins viewers to turn a black light (not supplied) onto the pages and flip back through for “an entirely different story.” What that might be, or even whether a filtered light source would work as well as a UV bulb, is left to anybody’s guess. The black hole and most of its victims sport roly-poly bodies and comically dismayed expressions in Batori’s cartoon illustrations—the universe in its entirety goes undepicted, unsurprisingly, and the quark never does appear, in the visible spectrum at least. This anthropomorphization adds a slapstick element that does nothing to pull the physics and the premise together.
An unpalatable mess left half-baked by an ill-conceived gimmick. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8077-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A solid introduction to fascinating artists, some familiar, others less so.
Contemporary and historical female artists are showcased for younger readers.
The artists’ names aren’t presented in A-to-Z order. The alphabetical arrangement actually identifies signature motifs (“D is for Dots” for Yayoi Kusama); preferred media (“I is for Ink” for Elizabeth Catlett); or cultural, natural, or personal motives underlying artworks (“N is for Nature” for Maya Lin). Various media are covered, such as painting, box assemblage, collage, photography, pottery, and sculpture. One artist named isn’t an individual but rather the Gee’s Bend Collective, “generations of African American women in Gee’s Bend, Alabama,” renowned for quilting artistry. Each artist and her or their work is introduced on a double-page spread that features succinct descriptions conveying much admiring, easily comprehensible information. Colorful illustrations include graphically simplified representations of the women at work or alongside examples of their art; the spreads provide ample space for readers to understand what the artists produced. Several women were alive when this volume was written; some died in the recent past or last century; two worked several hundred years ago, when female artists were rare. Commendably, the profiled artists are very diverse: African American, Latina, Native American, Asian, white, and multiethnic women are represented; this diversity is reflected in their work, as explained via texts and illustrations.
A solid introduction to fascinating artists, some familiar, others less so. (minibiographies, discussion questions, art suggestions) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-10872-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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