A disjointed jumble—the parts (some of them, anyway) better than the whole.
This Spanish import via Germany offers glimpses of the southernmost continent framed as a quick tribute/travelogue.
Cuesta Hernando begins the book by describing a sea voyage to McMurdo Station in a faux journal format but is inconsistent about maintaining it. After galleries of Antarctic whales, seals, and penguins, he moves on to various Antarctica-related topics. These include daily life at a research station, climatological facts about the continent, a bulleted list of human-caused “Lurking Dangers” to the ecosystem, a discussion of volcanoes, a Eurocentric “Who Discovered Antarctica” entry, a page of arbitrary facts that does double duty as a glossary, and a closing note about climate change…at both poles. The facts have been strung together with little apparent sense of flow, a picture caption that mentions the Antarctic Treaty occurring several pages before the topical spread that explains it. Along with icescapes and wildlife, Martín’s reasonably accurate paintings offer views of McMurdo scientists (mostly but not entirely White) at work inside and out, a volcano, the Antarctic seabed, and the southern aurora. Armchair naturalists and explorers will be better served by the closer encounters described in, for instance, Sally M. Walker’s Frozen Secrets (2010) or Sophie Webb’s evocative My Season With Penguins (2000). (This book was reviewed digitally with 14.3-by-23-inch double-page spreads viewed at 50% of actual size.)
A disjointed jumble—the parts (some of them, anyway) better than the whole. (map) (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-7913-7456-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Prestel
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Prospective space tourists should have no trouble finding a more reliable travel guide.
Barr and Williams present 13.8 billion years of cosmic history, from the Big Bang to the International Space Station and, possibly soon, flights beyond.
The co-authors write with the same enthusiasm and energy they showed in telling The Story of Life (2015) but with less regard for accuracy or internal logic. Following an inherently paradoxical opening claim that “Before the Big Bang there was….[n]o time,” they go on with a sweeping survey of the cosmos. It offers a picture of galaxies “sparkling silently” (wrong on both counts) in “bitterly cold” space (likewise wrong: space has no temperature), with incomplete references to the “freezing” atmospheres of our solar system’s other planets (Venus’ 462 C average temperature goes unmentioned) and the “cold, dusty moon” orbiting Earth (cold only on the side away from the sun). Two space-suited young explorers, one light-skinned, one dark, float through painted illustrations that progress from mighty explosions and swirling starscapes to closely packed planets, fleets of early spacecraft, a cloud of satellites, and, finally, space liners ferrying multicultural tour groups to an orbiting hotel, or maybe Mars.
Prospective space tourists should have no trouble finding a more reliable travel guide. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78603-003-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A sketchy teaser in search of an audience.
A subatomic narrator describes how helium, a nonrenewable resource, is formed deep underground.
The very simple cartoon style of the illustrations suggests a breezier ride than the scientifically challenging content delivers. With much reliance on explanatory endnotes, Rooney sends her zippy narrator—newly freed from a popped balloon (see Eddie the Electron, 2015)—barreling its way past billions of nitrogen and oxygen atoms to the top of the atmosphere. Eddie describes how uranium and thorium trapped in the newly formed planet’s crust self-destructed to leave helium as a stable byproduct. Billions of tedious years later (“I thought I would die of pair annihilation!”) that helium was extracted for a wide variety of industrial uses. Following mentions of Einstein and how Eddie is mysteriously connected to other atoms “in a way that surpasses space and time,” the popeyed purple particle floats off with a plea to cut down on the party balloons to conserve a rare element. Younger readers may find this last notion easier to latch onto than the previous dose of physics, which is seriously marred both by the vague allusions and by Eddie’s identification as a helium atom rather than the free electron that his portrayals in the art, not to mention his moniker, indicate.
A sketchy teaser in search of an audience. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944995-14-0
Page Count: 27
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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