by Neil Armstrong ; illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2022
A compelling invitation to take the long view.
A small bit of the primordial Earth is blasted into space…and a longtime later makes a return journey via Apollo 11.
Utilizing parts of a talk Armstrong delivered in 2006, Baker-Smith recasts a chunk of basalt that became part of the moon (thanks to a “celestial fender bender” in the solar system’s early days) as a witness to the history of our planet. Measuring by the “billennium,” Bok oversees continents rising and falling, life’s appearance, and the arrival of dinosaurs. “But they disappeared almost before Bok noticed them.” Taking a brief nap, he then misses “the unfolding story of humankind” until suddenly a “peculiar creature” in a vacuum suit snatches him up and carries him back to where his story began. The artist puts a tiny face on the potato-shaped rock, but for the most part he focuses on large-scale events—vividly capturing the wild violence of those molten eons, the eerie wonder of Earth’s shallow early oceans in bright moonlight, extinction events, ice ages, and views of the suspenseful flight. In the backmatter, short biographies of the moon and Armstrong’s astronautical career fill in further detail. Though the photos in the last part are all of White men, an earlier picture encapsulates our aforementioned “unfolding story” with portraits of Plato, Hypatia, Maria Mitchell, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Bessie Coleman. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A compelling invitation to take the long view. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-37886-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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by Yolanda Kondonassis & illustrated by Joan Brush ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2012
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental...
Pollution, energy use, and simply throwing things away have created a worldwide mess that kids can help clean up with an eight-step action plan.
This well-meant offering introduces the idea of the interconnectedness of human activities and the state of our world. We’re all affected by pollution. Our need for energy results in a variety of current problems: unclean air, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns. We should use less. Trash doesn’t vanish; it must be burned or dumped. We should also recycle. This helps save trees, which “eat up pollution.” Colorful, unsophisticated cartoons show a bunny magician who cannot make trash disappear and a diverse array of young people who can. The author’s strong message is undercut by end matter that twice states that “many scientists” consider climate change to be caused by global warming. A National Academy of Sciences survey in 2010 showed an overwhelming consensus: 97 percent. Inspired by her concern for the environment, Kondonassis wrote this when she was unable to find an appropriate book that would explain to her young daughter why she should care. Too bad she missed Kim Michelle Toft’s The World That We Want (2005) or Todd Parr’s The Earth Book (2010).
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental tweets. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61608-588-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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by Saskia Lacey ; illustrated by Martin Sodomka ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete...
A mouse, a bird, and a junkyard frog assemble a car from the ground up—cluing in readers who may be a bit vague on what’s beneath all those hoods…or at least what used to be.
Enlisting his green buddy Hank to supply the parts and feathered Phoebe to draw up the plans, Eli, “king of crazy ideas,” sees his latest project grow from a frame and some miscellaneous loose parts to a nifty blue convertible with a classic 1950s look. At each stage, Sodomka supplies clearly drawn angled or cutaway views with dozens of major components labeled, from “steering knuckle bracket” to “tie rod” and “ball joint.” The gas tank is labeled but seems to be missing, though, and readers who want to know what a “differential” actually does or the purpose of the “indicator switch” are out of luck. Lacey’s claim that an engine “is like the brain of the car” doesn’t bear close examination, either. Moreover, the finished auto isn’t much like most modern cars, as it has no electronic elements, for instance, and is powered by a three-cylinder engine (misleadingly billed as “regular”) quaintly fed by a long-obsolescent carburetor. With an auto under their belts (and with similar oversimplification), Eli’s “Scrap Pack” goes on to an even more ambitious enterprise in How to Build a Plane. In both volumes, closer looks at selected systems or related topics follow the storyline’s happy conclusion, and each broad trial-and-error step in the construction is recapped at the end.
Young makers will find the Scrap Pack’s enthusiasm infectious, but even as broad overviews, these offer at best incomplete pictures. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63322-041-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Quarto
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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