by Nathaniel Adams ; illustrated by Ryan Johnson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 2020
Geography, history, engineering, and trains—all in one elegant package.
What’s not to love about trains?
Thirteen scenic train routes from every corner of the globe are described in detail in this German import. Two or three two-page spreads are dedicated to each route, with retro-feeling illustrations in bold, flat colors showing the dramatic landscapes traveled by these trains together with some of the passengers and local wildlife. Each spread contains general descriptions of the route along with a mock ticket with key data about the length of the track, main stops, and starting date of operation. The chosen routes are tremendously varied, from the quaint Snowdon Mountain rack-and-pinion railway in Wales to the 5,772-mile-long Trans-Siberian Railway (“almost twice as wide as the United States!”). Effort has been made to inject diversity and historical interest into what could be just a book of statistics for train nerds. Each train route depicts passengers, often people of color; notably, a Black engineer on Norway and Sweden’s Arctic Circle freight train is treating her daughter to a ride. Local customs and cuisine are referenced, such as the springbok steak on the Namibia Desert Express and bento box lunches on Japan’s shinkansen, or bullet trains. There’s even haggis for dinner on the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Scotland. It’s a great reference tool for a middle school social studies project, although the tiny, light italicized type used for some captions is hard to read.
Geography, history, engineering, and trains—all in one elegant package. (map, glossary) (Nonfiction. 10-16)Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-3-89955-845-6
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Little Gestalten
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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by Kathleen Krull & illustrated by Boris Kulikov ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2006
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
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by Kathleen Krull & illustrated by Boris Kulikov
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by Amy Stewart ; illustrated by Briony Morrow-Cribbs ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 8, 2017
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative.
This junior edition of Stewart’s lurid 2011 portrait gallery of the same name (though much less gleeful subtitle) loses none of its capacity for leaving readers squicked-out.
The author drops a few entries, notably the one on insect sexual practices, and rearranges toned-down versions of the rest into roughly topical sections. Beginning with the same cogent observation—“We are seriously outnumbered”—she follows general practice in thrillers of this ilk by defining “bug” broadly enough to include all-too-detailed descriptions of the life cycles and revolting or deadly effects of scorpions and spiders, ticks, lice, and, in a chapter evocatively titled “The Enemy Within,” such internal guests as guinea worms and tapeworms. Mosquitoes, bedbugs, the ubiquitous “Filth Fly,” and like usual suspects mingle with more-exotic threats, from the tongue-eating louse and a “yak-killer hornet” (just imagine) to the aggressive screw-worm fly that, in one cited case, flew up a man’s nose and laid hundreds of eggs…that…hatched. Morrow-Cribbs’ close-up full-color drawings don’t offer the visceral thrills of the photos in, for instance, Rebecca L. Johnson’s Zombie Makers (2012) but are accurate and finely detailed enough to please even the fussiest young entomologists.
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative. (index, glossary, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61620-755-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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