A fast-paced adventure involving dinosaurs that should appeal to creationists.
In this debut YA novel, a time traveler discovers that the Ice Age occurred several thousand years ago, matching the biblical account of Creation.
Bill Abrams is a scientist who aims to prove the Earth’s true age and development via his invention, a time machine he dubs the Light Assimilator, propelled by the sun’s ultraviolet rays. He questions the current scientific consensus that the Earth is billions of years old: “I am beginning to believe that man, dinosaurs, and even trilobites lived together on this planet surrounded by a tropical haven until something catastrophic happened.” Abrams travels to 2351 B.C.E. and discovers that the Earth is one giant continent, Saudi Arabia is a massive jungle, and a solid band of water is “located at the edge of outer space where the ozone layer is today.” In between some exploits and narrow escapes, Abrams documents his findings—including dinosaurs and Noah’s Ark. Sadly, all his evidence is lost when Halley’s Comet disrupts the water belt, causing a great flood. Now convinced that Genesis is true, Abrams decides: “I must also believe in the remainder of the Scriptures,” including the New Testament, and is converted to Christianity. Though he returns to the present, the government gets involved, suppressing this new knowledge—for now. In his novel, Leonard offers a fast-moving, Jules Verne–like story with dangers, escapes, and dinosaurs. It’s backed by science-ish explanations; for example, ultraviolet rays act like a magnet somehow to propel the craft. This detail is perplexing, though—why isn’t the time machine just drawn straight into the sun? Even more controversial, for the science-minded, is the tale’s evidence for Abrams’ theories—including that dinosaurs, trilobites, and humans lived together on Earth—for which it is easy to find, for those who care to look on the internet, well-reasoned debunking. (A short creationist bibliography is included.) Leonard also repeatedly identifies Abrams as an archaeologist, though he performs climate science and wrote his thesis on radiation propulsion. The author’s insistence that early humans were all light-skinned, together with Abrams’ conversion to Christianity, may also bother some readers.
A fast-paced adventure involving dinosaurs that should appeal to creationists.Pub Date: May 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4908-7300-8
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
© 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.
