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
A memorable flight for prospective space travelers.
An overview of our solar system, from the sun to the Kuiper Belt, and how we are exploring it.
As solar-system tours go, it’s a quick flyby, but it’s also lively and unusually rich in uncommon observations and insights. Following views of the Big Bang and the history of astronomy, Stuart stops at the sun, then Mercury, Venus (where human visitors would be “baked, crushed, and dissolved”), and each other planet in succession. On the way, he cogently argues that Mars is the “most explored” planet, as we have better maps of its surface than our own ocean bottoms. The journey is rounded out with a mixed bag of topical spreads ranging from a gallery of dwarf planets to a timeline of our outer-space ventures up to Elon Musk’s 2018 SpaceX rocket launch and a diagrammatic look at a modern Soyuz launch and return. In the illustrations, satellites and spacecraft, enlarged images of select moons, exploded views, fact boxes, and digestible narrative blocks orbit Brandon-King’s larger, reasonably realistic planetary portraits. Occasional scenes feature light- and dark-skinned human figures of all genders peering into telescopes or floating in vacuum.
A memorable flight for prospective space travelers. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78708-017-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Button Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A disorganized grab bag with parts that may be of some value to young stargazers.
A picture of our nearest cosmic neighbor, from violent origins to likely demise.
Aguilar, a veteran science writer and illustrator, opens with a recap of (theorized) stages in the moon’s evolution over the past 4.5 billion years. Then, in no particular order, he speeds through a jumble of lunar topics including tides and phases, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, werewolves, moon-based festivals, and visits both fantastic and real. In a more practical vein, at least for budding sky watchers, he follows a simplified map of the moon’s near side with closer looks at 17 craters and other features easily visible through small telescopes or binoculars before closing, after a scenario of the moon’s probable end, with instructions for creating a plaster or papier-mâché moonscape and for drawing (not photographing!) lunar features observed through a lens. All of this is presented against a seamless series of photos and realistic paintings, sometimes a mix of the two. The author’s ethnography in his discussion of myths is at best superficial, and his survey of earthly history ends with the Apollo program, but his astronomy-based descriptions and explanations are clear and well-founded.
A disorganized grab bag with parts that may be of some value to young stargazers. (websites, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4263-3322-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: National Geographic Kids
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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