A sure-fire hit with young readers who are always ready for a good disaster tale.
In an adaptation for young readers of his A Storm Too Soon: A True Story of Disaster, Survival, and an Incredible Rescue (2013), Tougias tells the story of the Sean Seymour II, a 44-foot sailboat swamped in a Gulf Stream storm in 2007.
For Rudy Snel, Jean Pierre “JP” de Lutz, and Ben Frye, it’s a dream voyage to cross the Atlantic from Florida to France in JP’s beloved boat. Conditions are favorable, the boat is in great shape, and the white men will be sailing in May, ahead of the hurricane season. They will simply sail northeast toward Bermuda and turn due east toward Europe. But best-laid plans go awry, and they find themselves caught in a storm of otherworldly proportions. Eighty-foot rogue waves sink the boat, and all hope resides in their life raft and their global position–indicating radio beacon. Tougias’ third-person narrative, condensed and more tightly focused than the adult version, brings to life the struggles and heroism of the sailors and rescuers alike, highlighting life lessons learned. The urgent present-tense narration places readers in the action, with smoothly woven detours adding information on such details as the trick to getting into a lifeboat, how sharks attack, and brief biographies of the rescuers. Readers will be fascinated by details about rescue boats, hypothermia, sharks, the Gulf Stream, and the difficult lives after survival.
A sure-fire hit with young readers who are always ready for a good disaster tale. (epilogue, author’s note) (Nonfiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-281-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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