Thin on facts but perhaps enough to get a discussion going.
A quick overview of current issues related to gun control.
Though too cursory to provide fodder for serious debate, this pro-and-con–style report on the rising tide of gun-related crimes, accidents, and mass murders in the U.S. invites readers to understand the scope of the problem and reflect on why it has led to polarized positions on gun control. Casting his narrative into easily digestible blocks that are light on specifics and statistics (and even lighter on sources for his numbers), Hunter presents position statements on facing pages. He covers issues ranging from whether or not gun ownership is a right to whether the next generation will find a solution for gun violence. In laying out explanatory background, the author’s efforts to sound even-handed lead to the potentially inflammatory claim that “police officers must assume that most suspected criminals are armed” and the dismally bland formulation that the use of firearms by police is “often controversial.” Hunter successfully avoids using coded, politically partisan language, and mentions important contextual data, such as the fact that fewer than 100 of the 40,000 lives lost on average to guns in the U.S. each year are due to terrorist action. Many photos break up the text, showing memorials, crime scenes, and racially diverse people protesting for and against gun-related issues. The resource lists at the end contain just four books and three websites.
Thin on facts but perhaps enough to get a discussion going. (picture credits, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781917187695
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Cheriton Children's Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest.
A quick history of hacking, from the “phone phreaks” of the 1960s to today’s attacks on commercial data stores large and small.
Drawing solely from previously published reports and documents, the authors paint an alarming picture (“The internet has become a cyber criminal playground”) as they trace the growth of increasingly sophisticated digital attacks on personal, corporate and government data systems. Though they rightly point out that many hackers, from early “phreaks” like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on, have been motivated more by the pleasures of creating software or high-tech gear (or, as they acknowledge in the case of Edward Snowden, idealism) than criminal intent, most of the incidents they describe involve theft or espionage. Noting that attacks can come from anywhere in the world and that malware can be secretly installed not just on computers, but on any number of gadgets, the authors project little hope of keeping our information safe from bad guys. Nor do they offer more than, at best, bare mention of firewalls, encryption, two-step verification, strong passwords and other protective countermeasures. Still, readers will at least come away more aware of the range of hazards, from phishing and ransomware to botnets and distributed denial of service, as well as the huge, rapidly increasing amounts of money and data shadowy entities are raking in.
A bare-bones introduction for readers without a pre-existing interest. (source notes, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4677-2512-5
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution.
An exploration of animal intelligence.
Castaldo opens with a discussion of brainpower before summarizing historical thinking on animal cognition and then presenting evidence of it, in the form of a dizzying array of experiments on such subtopics as decision-making, empathy, a sense of fairness, and communication, among others. Candy-colored pastel shades and striking photographs make flipping the pages a pleasure, but actually reading them is something of a chore. Sidebars often appear out of sequence with the text and are of varying levels of utility, as is also the case with photo captions. Low points include a reference to the author’s middle school report on dolphins and a photograph of a dolphin alone in a tank that’s labeled, “A dolphin at the National Aquarium is studied by cognitive researchers.” Chapters are broken up into subtopics with catchy headings (“The Hive Brain”; “Emo Rats”) except when they are not, as with a relatively lengthy discussion of interspecies communication that wanders from bonobos to dolphins to Peter Gabriel to orangutans. The book’s sense of its audience is uncertain. Profligate use of exclamation points and simplistic “what would you do” scenarios seem geared to younger readers, while the un-glossed use of such terms as “habeas corpus” and “prosocial,” as well as a conceptually complex model of brain processing, assumes a fairly sophisticated audience.
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution. (resources, glossary, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-63335-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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