Kids should have some fun, but they won’t make a job of returning.
To do the job, you need the right stuff.
That’s the premise of this themed picture dictionary that displays tools, equipment, and apparel associated with different jobs. Illustrated in muted colors, the objects corresponding to the jobs are arranged and labeled on two-page spreads. Each spread includes an informative sidebar; additionally, kids are challenged to answer a question about each career. For instance, readers must select which tools a chef uses for measuring. (Answers to all questions are given at the end.) Some other occupations include artist, doctor, and mechanic. It is simple enough, but there are concerns with this title, originally published in Spanish, with numerous examples of off-the-mark labeling, such as “ceramic” and “antiquity” used to label pottery pieces on the “Artist” spread. A few spreads feature outdated items that will be unfamiliar: vinyl record and cassette player and tape; typewriter and film reel; floppy disk and a laughably passé cellphone. Some experiences are out of young children’s ken, so a few questions will be difficult to answer, and, on several pages, details get lost in gutters. Picture quizzes at the back require readers to find objects not belonging to the professions of depicted persons. Commendably, the illustrated workers are racially, ethnically, and nontraditionally gender diverse. Besides expanding vocabulary, the book develops the math skill of classifying.
Kids should have some fun, but they won’t make a job of returning. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-3-7913-7404-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Prestel
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Prospective younger visitors can do better than this bland mush.
A scan of landmarks, neighborhoods, food, and other attractions in the Big Apple.
Perfunctory efforts to give this tour at least a pretense of geographic or thematic unity only add to its higgledy-piggledy character. Arrhenius (City, 2018, etc.) opens with a full-page view of the Brooklyn Bridge soaring over an otherwise-unidentifiable cityscape opposite a jumble of eight smaller images that are, for all that one is labeled “Brooklyn Academy of Music” and another “Coney Island,” are likewise so stylized as to look generic. From there, in the same one-topic-per-spread format, it’s on to Manhattan uptown and down for “Rockefeller Center,” “Shopping,” and other random bites. The “Harlem” spread features a fire hydrant, a mailbox, and the (actually distant) Cloisters museum, for instance, and a glance into “Queens” offers glimpses of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a “Greek restaurant,” a “Mexican restaurant,” and “marathon runners.” The large trim size and aesthetic mimic M. Sasek’s perennial This Is New York (1960, revised edition 2003) while adding much-needed updates with both more diverse arrays of dress and skin hues for the stylized human figures as well as the addition of sites such as the Stonewall Inn, the 9/11 memorial, and the Fearless Girl statue.
Prospective younger visitors can do better than this bland mush. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0990-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Brilliant as usual—but best suited for the shelves of personal libraries rather than public ones.
From the Press Here! (2011) panjandrum, a high-energy invitation to break out pens, pencils, and crayons for an instructive rumpus.
A brisk, directed tutorial in following instructions while having a barrel of fun, this workbook opens with a visual flex in the form of a flap of die-cut holes placed interestingly over a diverse set of patterns, then presents a hefty block of 140 drawing pages. These range from totally blank at the outset to busy spreads teeming with dots, circles, or other shapes in primary colors, and each comes with a prompt: to add dots or loops of specified size or in specified places; carefully color inside, or outside, the lines; connect dots of a certain color or particular relationship; turn dots into fruit, cars, fish, faces, and more; or mark everything up in some other way. Along the way motor skills get a workout too, as the interactions tend to progress from simple to less so: “Make these dots the same. / Now make them as different as can be!” Who knew there was so much one could do with red, yellow, and blue dots? Once they start, primary grade Picassos are going to find it hard to stop before the end, and as the pages aren’t erasable, do-overs aren’t in the picture.
Brilliant as usual—but best suited for the shelves of personal libraries rather than public ones. (Novelty. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7860-8
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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