Drawing from the pages of a recently “discovered” journal, Bernasconi chronicles the uniformly disastrous experiments of forgotten aviation pioneer Manuel J. Arsenio, an 18th-century Patagonian who, though he had “little knowledge of physics or mechanics and had access only to useless materials,” turned to flight after failing at cheese making, scuba diving and other ventures. Repeated exclamations of “It cannot fail!” notwithstanding, each of Arsenio’s Da Vinci-esque inventions—six of which, from the “Corkscrewpterus,” to the “Hamstertronic,” Bernasconi depicts in detailed collages made from gears, belts, wires and other, mostly metal, found materials—stay intact just long enough to set the hapless captain up for a long fall. Resembling Humpty Dumpty with a pointy nose and a serious underbite, Arsenio cuts a decidedly comic figure, but by the end, his unflagging optimism will have won at least some reader sympathy, and if, as Bernasconi suggests, his journal was found on the Moon, perhaps in the end he did achieve his dream. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: May 2, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-50749-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lighthearted first look at an increasingly useful skill.
Grown-ups may not be the only audience for this simple explanation of how algorithms work.
Taking a confused-looking hipster parent firmly in hand, a child first points to all the computers around the house (“Pro Tip: When dealing with grown-ups, don’t jump into the complicated stuff too fast. Start with something they already know”). Next, the child leads the adult outside to make and follow step-by-step directions for getting to the park, deciding which playground equipment to use, and finally walking home. Along the way, concepts like conditionals and variables come into play in street maps and diagrams, and a literal bug stands in for the sort that programmers will inevitably need to find and solve. The lesson culminates in an actual sample of very simple code with labels that unpack each instruction…plus a pop quiz to lay out a decision tree for crossing the street, because if “your grown-up can explain it, that shows they understand it!” That goes for kids, too—and though Spiro doesn’t take the logical next step and furnish leads to actual manuals, young (and not so young) fledgling coders will find plenty of good ones around, such as Get Coding! (2017), published by Candlewick, or Rachel Ziter’s Coding From Scratch (2018).
A lighthearted first look at an increasingly useful skill. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781623543181
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Dedicating her newest offering to Leonardo da Vinci, “My special hero of invention,” Williams sweeps through the entire history of inventions, from ball (“an unknown Stone Age child, c. 40,000 B.C.”) to ball-point (Ladislao Biro, 1938). Framing sequential comic book–style panels in banter and bits of fact delivered by a flock of birds, she highlights 11 important figures, adding spreads devoted to women, to “Inventors of Useful Things” and in closing, to several dozen favorites, including such modern necessities as the chocolate bar (François Louis Cailler, 1819) and the self-cleaning house (Frances Gabe, 1950). She’s not much for depth of detail, but her brightly colored cartoons, crowded with tiny, expressively drawn figures, create an irresistibly celebratory tone, and by pairing familiar names with lesser-known but no less deserving precursors—Richard Trevithick with George Stephenson, Antonio Meucci with Alexander Graham Bell—she counters the more simplistic accounts common in other titles. An exuberant alternative to Judith St. George’s skimpier but more analytical So You Want to Be an Inventor (2002), illus by David Small. (index) (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7636-2760-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
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