Branches gently out into both natural science and human culture, albeit sparely.
A sweet sifting of tree- and forest-related facts and folklore.
Calling on the testimony of beasts and breezes for more far-flung topics, “Oakheart the Brave,” a gnarled oak with anthropomorphic features, offers an easygoing overview of forest types, seeds, tree fruits, and seasonal cycles interspersed with fragmentary versions of old tales. These last range from the story of how Nimue trapped Merlin and a heavily pruned account of an intrepid Hungarian lad who scales a “Sky-High Tree” to a Persian encounter between a wise girl and an invisible dragon beneath “The Tree of Life.” Other tales included hail from India, Scotland, and Norway. The “secret life” motif comes out occasionally, most clearly in explanations of the functions of each tree layer from bark on in. The notion that forests both give and need protection forms a strong secondary theme—leading up to a closing set of “How To Be Tree-Happy” activities such as recycling paper products and planting acorns to make new oaks. Mineker’s delicately detailed illustrations mix spot art with floating woodscapes as airy and uncluttered as the narrative. Human figures, though small and not common, do sport subtle differences in skin hues and generic period or regional dress.
Branches gently out into both natural science and human culture, albeit sparely. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-5002-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The premise is mostly a pretext, but it should appeal to younger STEM-winders.
In the spirit of Richard Scarry, Wilsher and Li offer glimpses of people engaged in 102 science or science-related activities.
Take the “all day” bit as poetic license. Along the same lines as Wendy Hunt’s What Do Animals Do All Day? (illustrated by Studio Muti, 2018) but closer to reality, eight tiny figures—rendered in Li’s neatly drawn illustrations with skin of diverse hues but Eurocentric work dress—in each of 14 generic locales describe their interests or occupations in a sentence or two. Viewers are challenged to identify them from these descriptions using visual clues in a populous unlabeled scene such as a hospital, an aerospace center, or a nature preserve. The author loosens the definition of “scientist” enough to include two schoolchildren taking scientific notes, a tree surgeon, a co-pilot, and a jackhammer operator (“Expert on Drilling”). The author also occasionally fudges (a marine biologist at an Arctic research station poses next to a “Research Scientist” who “is studying to become a marine biologist”) or creates artificial distinctions, such as “Mechanical Engineer” and “Maintenance Engineer.” Nevertheless, the identification game may give the abilities of budding sleuths a workout in addition to the notion that science encompasses a broad range of occupations.
The premise is mostly a pretext, but it should appeal to younger STEM-winders. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4978-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Broad but shallow, best considered as an appetizer for meatier surveys.
The history of technology gets a quick once-over, highlighting 15 milestones.
Skipping blithely past the inventions of stone tools and agriculture, the authors begin with the wheel, (arbitrarily dated to 3,500 B.C.E.), close with nuclear weapons and the internet (“Today”), and in between tick off paper, gunpowder, vaccines, telephones, plastic bottles, and like more or less ubiquitous props for modern civilization. Each gets a spread, usually with a left-to-right progression of approximate time and place of invention followed by early uses, later refinements, and finally modern status. Husband’s informally drawn cartoon scenes offer views of early to late types of technology, a newly electrified city thickly strung with power lines, sea life unhappily wrestling with nets and plastic bags in a garbage-strewn ocean, and world maps festooned with people of diverse dress and color using phones and computers to communicate. The spare, big-picture narrative mentions no inventors by name (“While roads covered the land, only birds crossed the skies. Until one windy day in America when two brothers took off”), but the authors do sound repeated cautionary notes about the environmental effects of pollution, and like the crowd of peace protesters in the nuke entry’s foreground (which at least looks larger than the mushroom cloud in the background), human figures throughout are racially diverse, if not always individualized.
Broad but shallow, best considered as an appetizer for meatier surveys. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4537-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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