The busyness of the endeavor turns it into a turkey shoot, where luck—more than skill—is the likelier factor in making a...
An effort at making sense of big numbers, with digressions into the history and various fields of mathematics.
Really big numbers are, for the most part, either vexing or comical, meaningless or all about effect. Huggins-Cooper’s hinge is Rubik’s Cube, the plastic puzzle that has frustrated gazillions. “The numbers start to get really big when you look at all the different ways the cubes can be arranged. And that’s when you will discover just how big 43 quintillion is.” The brief forays into the history of math and mathematicians are straightforward; readers “discover” something about zero, place value and the decimal system, Pythagoras, Al Khwarizmi and Fibonacci, endlessness and absence. The speed of light comes into focus, and the Ishango Bone, possibly the first evidence of counting (on a baboon’s leg, at that), is a hoot of a mystery. But other attempts at revelation fall short: “Think about 1,000,000 miles—that’s almost the distance to the moon and back, two times,” while the accompanying artwork depicts more than two times. “The ‘golden ratio’ is a special number” is too airy by half, and the relationship of the radius to the circumference, Pi, is again trumped by its illustration, which appears to show a 1-yard radius producing a circumference of 3.14 yards.
The busyness of the endeavor turns it into a turkey shoot, where luck—more than skill—is the likelier factor in making a point. (Nonfiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60992-628-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: QEB Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This glossy, colorful title in the “I Want To Be” series has visual appeal but poor organization and a fuzzy focus, which limits its usefulness. Each double-paged layout introduces a new topic with six to eight full-color photographs and a single column of text. Topics include types of environmentalists, eco-issues, waste renewal, education, High School of Environmental Studies, environmental vocabulary, history of environmentalism, famous environmentalists, and the return of the eagle. Often the photographs have little to do with the text or are marginal to the topic. For example, a typical layout called “Some Alternative Solutions” has five snapshots superimposed on a double-page photograph of a California wind farm. The text discusses ways to develop alternative forms of energy and “encourage environmentally friendly lifestyles.” Photos include “a healer who treats a patient with alternative therapy using sound and massage,” and “the Castle,” a house built of “used tires and aluminum cans.” Elsewhere, “Did You Know . . . ” shows a dramatic photo of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but the text provides odd facts such as “ . . . that in Saudi Arabia there are solar-powered pay phones in the desert?” Some sections seem stuck in, a two-page piece on the effects of “El Niño” or 50 postage-stamp–sized photos of endangered species. The author concludes with places to write for more information and a list of photo credits. Pretty, but little here to warrant purchase. (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-201862-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One delectable sampler of wonders, there for the asking.
A worldwide collection of superior oddities.
For each of the 47 countries featured here, Thuras and Mosco highlight two strange features, be they weather or natural resources, human artifact or moment in history. Accompanied by Ang’s full-color illustrations and a small globe situating the country under examination, Thuras and Mosco have linked each country to the next in line by some common curiosity. Peru’s Nazca Lines lead to Australia’s Marree Man, for instance, and then Australia’s second marvel—Lord Howe Island, where dwells the phasmid, a lobsterlike, hand-long insect—leads to Brazil’s Snake Island, which hosts swarms of golden lanceheads (“They sit in trees and ambush migratory birds, injecting flesh-dissolving venom into them”) but very few visitors. It is debatable whether a kid has to be adventurous to enjoy many of these unusual features, such as the Antikythera mechanism, which is akin to a 2,000-year-old computer, found in Greece or England’s difference engine No. 2, a 200-year-old mathematical calculator, but curiosity is both a must and a given. The tone is consistently upbeat but not melodramatic, giving the oddments a sense of reality rather than fantasy—that you could go and witness these phenomena yourself.
One delectable sampler of wonders, there for the asking. (Nonfiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0354-4
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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