Riveting as well as enlightening, this is built on a largely sturdy historical base.
Huey, an archaeologist, explains just why time travel is not for the weak of stomach.
Ah, the pleasures of a quick trip back to the 18th century—when people emptied chamber pots out of windows, free-roaming animals dumped poop on city streets, clothes were seemingly designed to be uncomfortable, and baths were rare (but infestations of lice, bedbugs, flies and intestinal parasites were not). Images of bugs scuttling over period illustrations and photos of pests and artifacts add vividly evocative notes to this rousingly unappetizing survey of the time’s fashions, living conditions and (lack of) sanitary practices. The author limits her purview to North American residents of European and African descent in, by and large, urban locales and doesn’t always get her facts straight (yes, there are mosquito species native to Europe). She strews her already sensational narrative with superfluous, boldface insertions of “Eew!” and “Gross!” Still, aside from one photo of a smallpox sufferer that may cross over, she ably walks the line that separates deliciously disgusting from genuinely disturbing.
Riveting as well as enlightening, this is built on a largely sturdy historical base. (endnotes, annotated reading and website lists, places to visit, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7613-9091-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
A well-intentioned description of life before birth. The illustrations make use of photographs (including ultrasound) and artist’s drawings, often in the same image, and these are well used to clarify the text. How babies grow and develop inside the womb is both described and illustrated, and while the tone is one of forced cheer, the information is sound. Also offered are quite silly exercises for children to experience what life in the womb might be like, such as listening to a dishwasher to experience the sounds a baby hears inside its mother’s body, or being held under a towel or blanket by an adult and wiggling about. The getting-together of sperm and egg is lightly passed over, as is the actual process of birth. But children may be mesmerized by the drawings of the growing child inside the mother, and what activities predate their birth dates. Not an essential purchase, but adequate as an addition to the collection. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-894379-01-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Logically pointing out that the American cowboy archetype didn’t spring up from nowhere, Sandler, author of Cowboys (1994) and other volumes in the superficial, if luxuriously illustrated, “Library of Congress Book” series, looks back over 400 years of cattle tending in North America. His coverage ranges from the livestock carried on Columbus’s second voyage to today’s herding-by-helicopter operations. Here, too, the generous array of dramatic early prints, paintings, and photos are more likely to capture readers’ imaginations than the generality-ridden text. But among his vague comments about the characters, values, and culture passed by Mexican vaqueros to later arrivals from the Eastern US, Sadler intersperses nods to the gauchos, llaneros, and other South American “cowmen,” plus the paniolos of Hawaii, and the renowned African-American cowboys. He also decries the role film and popular literature have played in suppressing the vaqueros’ place in the history of the American West. He tackles an uncommon topic, and will broaden the historical perspective of many young cowboy fans, but his glance at modern vaqueros seems to stop at this country’s borders. Young readers will get a far more detailed, vivid picture of vaquero life and work from the cowboy classics in his annotated bibliography. (Notes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6019-7
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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