Packaged with a magazine-style cover, this sports book is loaded with hype. Bold display types, bright colors and superlative enticements will lure readers to discover the stories behind such moments as “Muhammad Ali’s Shocking Championship Upset.” The author makes a strong push to diversity by including 24 different sports, baseball leading the way with five moments listed as “The Greatest.” Only a few female athletes make the cut, yet there’s room for 1973’s fluff media event, “The Battle of the Sexes” between tennis star Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Labeling any event as “The Greatest” opens the door for disagreement, and the overall relevancy will be a problem for today’s teens. Will Babe Ruth always be included in “Greatest” conversations even 74 years after his last at-bat? The 1969 Mets may have been a miracle story 40 years ago, but detailing first baseman Marv Thornberry’s feats feels trivial now. Due to a juvenile tone, the target audience seems to be lower middle school, but they may not care about Granddad’s heroes. (Nonfiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4022-2099-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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
Just in time for the millennium comes this adaptation of Jennings and Brewster’s The Century (1998). Still a browsable, coffee-table edition, the book divides the last 100 years more or less by decade, with such chapter headings as “Shell Shock,” “Global Nightmare,” and “Machine Dreams.” A sweeping array of predominantly black-and-white photographs documents the story in pictures—from Theodore Roosevelt to O.J., the Panama Canal to the crumbling Berlin Wall, the dawn of radio to the rise of Microsoft—along with plenty of captions and brief capsules of historical events. Setting this volume apart, and making it more than just a glossy textbook overview of mega-events, are blue sidebars that chronicle the thoughts, actions, and attitudes of ordinary men, women, and children whose names did not appear in the news. These feature-news style interviews feature Milt Hinton on the Great Migration, Betty Broyles on a first automobile ride, Sharpe James on the effect of Jackie Robinson’s success on his life, Clara Hancox on growing up in the Depression, Marnie Mueller on life as an early Peace Corps volunteer, and more. The authors define the American century by “the inevitability of change,” a theme reflected in the selection of photographs and interviews throughout wartime and peacetime, at home and abroad. While global events are included only in terms of their impact on Americans, this portfolio of the century is right for leafing through or for total immersion. (index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32708-0
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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