An abstract conversation starter for readers of all ages who like thinking deeply about artistic and conceptual expression.
A conceptual exploration of the building blocks of art and writing.
The book opens with the Big Bang, depicted as a jumbled, jagged mess of colorful lines. That big scribble makes way for a small dot that “[flies] off by itself.” This dot lands on a square, described as a page; splits itself in two; and then multiplies exponentially. A double gatefold reveals that the dot learns to create infinite versions of itself. After the dots learn how to become a line, they create a series of lines that become a “surface,” the pages of a book, visual art (drawings described as “close to magic”), writing, and—after putting writing on the top of the series of pages the dot created—a book, or “the volume” now in readers’ hands. Though the story briefly flirts with cosmology and biology (one spread defines mitosis), it is primarily a deconstruction of visual art and writing (the latter given curt treatment and described merely as how “the drawing could make pictures of words”) and how those two constructs can build a book. The lengthy text, fond of whimsy, is paired with simple line drawings and is often dry in tone, reducing complicated events to their essentials: About the Big Bang, Camnitzer writes, “It was very messy.”
An abstract conversation starter for readers of all ages who like thinking deeply about artistic and conceptual expression. (Picture book. 10-18)Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-941366-28-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Gregory R. Miller & Co.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2021
Knowing why something costs so much might make you appreciate it, and the people who get it to you, more—and, perhaps, to...
Ka-ching! The sound says it all, but it is only the end of a long journey, as Sylvester and Hlinka explain.
You buy a baseball hat. Easy enough: You mowed the neighbor’s lawn, they gave you $5, and you gave that $5 to the store for the hat. But there is a lot more going on behind the scenes—the harvesting of the cotton for the hat, its construction (domestic, foreign), the cost of getting it to market, advertising, storage, etc. It’s a web of economic connections that Sylvester and Hlinka spell out with clarity in this primer on how your money gets divvied when you slap down that fiver. For any kid paying attention, this book will be a shocker. Sylvester and Hlinka build from fundamentals: What is value and worth, what is a salary (from the Latin for salt, when wages were paid in salt), what are costs, what is that thing called tax, and what does it buy? Sylvester and Hlinka are not out to overthrow capitalism, but simply by explaining how a credit card works or why energy companies make a dollar on seemingly every transaction, they spur readers to wonder about transparency and the ownership of natural resources.
Knowing why something costs so much might make you appreciate it, and the people who get it to you, more—and, perhaps, to act on that knowledge. (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55451-481-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Far from comprehensive but visually arresting and, at times, provocative.
Stylized graphics rendered in saturated hues set this quick overview of body systems apart from the general run.
Arranged in tabbed and color-coded sections, the tour covers familiar ground but often from an unusual angle. The tally of human senses at the beginning, for instance, includes “proprioception” (physical multitasking), and ensuing chapters on the skeletal, circulatory and other systems are capped with a miscellany of body contents and products—from selected parasites and chemicals to farts and sweat. Likewise, descriptions of a dozen physical components of the “Brain Box” are followed by notes on more slippery mental functions like “Consciousness” and “Imagination.” The facts and observations gathered by Rogers are presented as labels or captions. They are interspersed on each spread with flat, eye-dazzling images designed by Grundy not with anatomical correctness in mind but to show processes or relationships at a glance. Thus, to show body parts most sensitive to touch, a silhouette figure sports an oversized hand and foot, plus Homer Simpson lips (though genitals are absent, which seems overcautious as an explicit section on reproduction follows a few pages later), and a stack of bathtubs illustrates the quantity of urine the average adult produces in an average lifetime (385 bathtubs’ worth). There is no backmatter.
Far from comprehensive but visually arresting and, at times, provocative. (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7123-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Big Picture/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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