Both casual browsers and budding zoologists will light up.
A gallery of luminous natural beauties (not necessarily nocturnal), from puffins to polar lights.
Leading off with a lenticular 3-D cover image of a hawksbill sea turtle glimmering red and green, this (stock) photo gallery spans land, sea, and sky to present 23 lambent wonders—all animals except for the foxfire mushroom and the northern and southern auroras—enhanced by glow-in-the-dark highlights. Even without that gimmick the figures seem luminous against the deep, black backgrounds. Nor is the glow always external; chameleons shine from their very bones; fimbriated moray eels gleam in part from internal organs; and the mushrooms, an orange octopus, and several others in the lineup at least look brightly lit from within. Aside from occasional bobbles, such as a claim that glowworms luminesce as larvae opposite a photo of flashing adults and contradictory observations that polka-dot tree frogs shine either by natural or only in ultraviolet light, Regan’s lucid, specific remarks about how each organism makes and uses its lights are spot-on. Anita Sitarski’s Cold Light (2007) offers less-dazzling photography but makes a natural follow-up since it illuminates a wider range of examples (including light-producing rocks and minerals) in greater detail.
Both casual browsers and budding zoologists will light up. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-2281-0255-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Prospective space tourists should have no trouble finding a more reliable travel guide.
Barr and Williams present 13.8 billion years of cosmic history, from the Big Bang to the International Space Station and, possibly soon, flights beyond.
The co-authors write with the same enthusiasm and energy they showed in telling The Story of Life (2015) but with less regard for accuracy or internal logic. Following an inherently paradoxical opening claim that “Before the Big Bang there was….[n]o time,” they go on with a sweeping survey of the cosmos. It offers a picture of galaxies “sparkling silently” (wrong on both counts) in “bitterly cold” space (likewise wrong: space has no temperature), with incomplete references to the “freezing” atmospheres of our solar system’s other planets (Venus’ 462 C average temperature goes unmentioned) and the “cold, dusty moon” orbiting Earth (cold only on the side away from the sun). Two space-suited young explorers, one light-skinned, one dark, float through painted illustrations that progress from mighty explosions and swirling starscapes to closely packed planets, fleets of early spacecraft, a cloud of satellites, and, finally, space liners ferrying multicultural tour groups to an orbiting hotel, or maybe Mars.
Prospective space tourists should have no trouble finding a more reliable travel guide. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78603-003-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A sketchy teaser in search of an audience.
A subatomic narrator describes how helium, a nonrenewable resource, is formed deep underground.
The very simple cartoon style of the illustrations suggests a breezier ride than the scientifically challenging content delivers. With much reliance on explanatory endnotes, Rooney sends her zippy narrator—newly freed from a popped balloon (see Eddie the Electron, 2015)—barreling its way past billions of nitrogen and oxygen atoms to the top of the atmosphere. Eddie describes how uranium and thorium trapped in the newly formed planet’s crust self-destructed to leave helium as a stable byproduct. Billions of tedious years later (“I thought I would die of pair annihilation!”) that helium was extracted for a wide variety of industrial uses. Following mentions of Einstein and how Eddie is mysteriously connected to other atoms “in a way that surpasses space and time,” the popeyed purple particle floats off with a plea to cut down on the party balloons to conserve a rare element. Younger readers may find this last notion easier to latch onto than the previous dose of physics, which is seriously marred both by the vague allusions and by Eddie’s identification as a helium atom rather than the free electron that his portrayals in the art, not to mention his moniker, indicate.
A sketchy teaser in search of an audience. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944995-14-0
Page Count: 27
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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