In this admiring memoir of her father as a young ham radio operator in New York City during the 1920s, Barasch pulls readers into the initiate world of Morse code and early intercontinental communications. Not many children bitten by the radio bug went on to get their amateur operator’s license, but Barasch’s father did. She charts his progress—and illustrates it with finely descriptive pen-and-wash artwork—of drumming the dots and dashes into his subconscious, memorizing international code words, then taking the test. He becomes the chum of another, local operator, an older boy who takes the younger under his wing and regales him with a story of how he figured in the rescue of a mother and child when a neighboring apartment house took fire. Together they build a station for Barasch’s father, where he lets rip his first code and ultimately stars in his own slice of heroism when he passes along vital information as a hurricane pounds distant Florida. Barasch does an impressive job here. Through her warm, transporting watercolors and her stout text, she manages to turn the world of dots and dashes—hardly the obvious stuff of a compelling narrative—into a tour of a time and an enthusiasm worth taking again and again. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-36166-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
Miranda’s book counts the monsters gathering at a birthday party, while a simple rhyming text keeps the tally and surveys the action: “Seven starved monsters are licking the dishes./Eight blow out candles and make birthday wishes.” The counting proceeds to ten, then by tens to fifty, then gradually returns to one, which makes the monster’s mother, a purple pin-headed octopus, very happy. The book is surprisingly effective due to Powell’s artwork; the color has texture and density, as if it were poured onto the page, but the real attention-getter is the singularity of every monster attendee. They are highly individual and, therefore, eminently countable. As the numbers start crawling upward, it is both fun and a challenge to try to recognize monsters who have appeared in previous pages, or to attempt to stay focused when counting the swirling or bunched creatures. The story has glints of humor, and in combination with the illustrations is a grand addition to the counting shelf. (Picture book. 3-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201835-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
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