Next best thing to a real field trip, Leedy and her astrobiologist husband send a 22nd-century class on an excursion to Mars. Boarding a “spacejet” rather than a magic school bus, the children, while en route, report back in chatty email messages on the solar system in general. After landing, they send meaty observations on Martian climate, atmosphere and physical features as they visit the sites of various early missions, from Viking I to the Spirit Rover, and finally fetch up in the lush gardens beneath the dome of Marsbase Alpha. Around and within eye-filling, crisply reproduced color photos of the Martian surface, Leedy adds cartoon figures, labels, diagrams and insets for a full but never overcrowded look, and closes with a timeline, source URLs for the photos and a look at Martian mysteries that remain to be solved. Backed up by yet more information on her web site, this will please both casual and detail-hungry young readers, and makes a lively update for Franklyn Branley’s Mission To Mars (2002), illustrated by True Kelley. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8234-1954-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Pumpkin Book (32 pp.; $16.95; Sept. 15; 0-8234-1465-5): From seed to vine and blossom to table, Gibbons traces the growth cycle of everyone’s favorite autumn symbol—the pumpkin. Meticulous drawings detail the transformation of tiny seeds to the colorful gourds that appear at roadside stands and stores in the fall. Directions for planting a pumpkin patch, carving a jack-o’-lantern, and drying the seeds give young gardeners the instructions they need to grow and enjoy their own golden globes. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1465-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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