When seven-year-old April sees her adored older sister Annabel struggling with her trigonometry, she appeals to Albert Einstein for help. April ingenuously narrates the story, which takes place in 1952 and is based on an actual historical incident. This is promising enough stuff, but Barasch’s tale just tries too hard to be complete. April’s quest for help for her sister takes her to the library, where she reads “a lot of confusing stuff.” Not understanding it, but writing it down anyway, April attempts to distill such complex matters as the theory of relativity—a well-meaning effort that is likely to baffle her readers. That Einstein comes through in the end will not surprise those readers, but they are as unlikely to understand the answer he provides as they are the initial trigonometry problem. The concept is appealing enough—famous scientist helps kid—and the loose watercolor vignettes ably convey both Annabel’s anxiety and April’s desire to help, but the narrative’s attempt to convey even the bare bones of Einstein’s theory serves only to confuse the readers it hopes to communicate with. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-30435-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
Sloat collaborates with Huffman, a Yu’pik storyteller, to infuse a traditional “origins” tale with the joy of creating. Hearing the old women of her village grumble that they have only tasteless crowberries for the fall feast’s akutaq—described as “Eskimo ice cream,” though the recipe at the end includes mixing in shredded fish and lard—young Anana carefully fashions three dolls, then sings and dances them to life. Away they bound, to cover the hills with cranberries, blueberries, and salmonberries. Sloat dresses her smiling figures in mixes of furs and brightly patterned garb, and sends them tumbling exuberantly through grassy tundra scenes as wildlife large and small gathers to look on. Despite obtrusively inserted pronunciations for Yu’pik words in the text, young readers will be captivated by the action, and by Anana’s infectious delight. (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-88240-575-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd.
This British import is an imaginatively constructed sequence of images that show a white boy examining a city pavement, clearly in London, and the sights he would see if he were able to travel down to the Earth’s core and then back again to the surface.
The geologic layers are depicted in 10 vertical spreads that require a 90-degree turn to be read and include endpapers, which open out, concertina fashion, to show the interior of the Earth to its core. Beneath the urban setting are drains, pipes, and artifacts of urban infrastructure. Below that, archaeological relics are revealed. An Underground train speeds by, and below it, a stalactite-encrusted cave yawns. Deep below the Earth’s crust, magma, the Earth’s mantle, and the inner core are shown. Turn the page to start going up again, back through the mantle to the crust, where precious minerals are revealed, then fossils, tree roots, and animal burrows, ending with the same boy in the English countryside. The painted, stenciled, and collaged illustrations are full-bleed, and the tones graduate pleasantly from light colors at the surface of the Earth to rich pinks, yellows, and oranges as readers near the Earth’s core. The text is informative, if lacking in poetry, including such nuggets as “earthworms are expert recyclers, eating dead plants in the soil.”
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68297-136-9
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
