Viewing human history from an unusual angle, Hooper and Biesty follow a scrap of gold as it passes through many forms and hands over thousands of years. Fast-forwarding from its origin in a star, the gold begins its journey as part of a pharaoh’s death mask—stolen by robbers and quickly recast into a chalice that winds up in a temple, and so on down the centuries. Hooper creates scenarios for each stage of the journey, often around such historical figures as Nero, Charlemagne and Robert Boyle. Biesty adds typically well-populated, minutely detailed large scenes and insets. The gold, repeatedly divided, is ultimately scattered over much of the world: some disguising counterfeit coins; some as a ring displayed in a museum; some buried in a field; illuminating a manuscript letter; or turned into buttons on an old uniform—one of which a modern New Yorker turns into a necklace. There’s plenty of food for thought here about permanence and change; young historians will enjoy the metal’s long trip, and will come away understanding that it’s never over. (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-340-78858-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
Arnold and Hewett (Stories in Stone, 1996, etc.) record the harrowing rescue of a baby gray whale who had become separated from her mother off the coast of California. She was discovered on January 10, 1997, exhausted, hungry, and near death. J.J. was 14 feet long when she was brought to SeaWorld as a young calf. Gaining 900 pounds in the first month, she had to be moved to a new home by crane. Her caretakers started planning on giving J.J. skills so that she could be released and survive on her own in the ocean. Divers put her food on the bottom of the pool, each day in a different location, so she could practice searching. Arnold is relaxed in her telling, allowing the already dramatic events to unfold naturally: “Everyone cheered as J.J. took a big breath, dove deep, and disappeared. The young whale was on her own.” Full-color photos capture the excitement of J.J.’s release, but also the hard work of preparing her for her return to the sea. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8167-4961-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-06-027821-8 For Aliki (Marianthe’s Story, 1998, etc.), the story of the Globe Theatre is a tale of two men: Shakespeare, who made it famous, and Sam Wanamaker, the driving force behind its modern rebuilding. Decorating margins with verbal and floral garlands, Aliki creates a cascade of landscapes, crowd scenes, diminutive portraits, and sequential views, all done with her trademark warmth and delicacy of line, allowing viewers to glimpse Elizabethan life and theater, historical sites that still stand, and the raising of the new Globe near the ashes of the old. She finishes with a play list, and a generous helping of Shakespearean coinages. Though the level of information doesn’t reach that of Diane Stanley’s Bard of Avon (1992), this makes a serviceable introduction to Shakespeare’s times while creating a link between those times and the present; further tempt young readers for whom the play’s the thing with Marcia Williams’s Tales From Shakespeare (1998). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027820-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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