Considering nature as artistic medium, Thomas opens with a poem about nature sketching winter; Orback illustrates it so, adding bits of color on succeeding pages. The warmth of the final winter page leads the reader into spring. Here the conceit is that nature “draws spring in pastel chalk” and softly colored pages reflect the poetry about the births of animals and buds on trees. Spring ends with rain and leads into summer’s watercolors. These pictures are much more vibrant than during spring: “Summer colors sparkle.” When Thomas begins her poem about autumn, the illustrations are oils in large blotches of fiery oranges and yellows. And Thomas crowds names of colors into long words: “redorangepurplebronze / indigogoldgreen. . . .” Finally, the poem returns full circle to winter’s black-and-white ink drawings. There is a strikingly rare synergy between the poetry and the illustrations in this truly remarkable addition to the pantheon of books on the four seasons for school-aged children. (Poetry. 7-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8225-6807-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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From a Caldecott and Sibert honoree, an invitation to take a mind-expanding journey from the surface of our planet to the furthest reaches of the observable cosmos.
Though Chin’s assumption that we are even capable of understanding the scope of the universe is quixotic at best, he does effectively lead viewers on a journey that captures a sense of its scale. Following the model of Kees Boeke’s classic Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (1957), he starts with four 8-year-old sky watchers of average height (and different racial presentations). They peer into a telescope and then are comically startled by the sudden arrival of an ostrich that is twice as tall…and then a giraffe that is over twice as tall as that…and going onward and upward, with ellipses at each page turn connecting the stages, past our atmosphere and solar system to the cosmic web of galactic superclusters. As he goes, precisely drawn earthly figures and features in the expansive illustrations give way to ever smaller celestial bodies and finally to glimmering swirls of distant lights against gulfs of deep black before ultimately returning to his starting place. A closing recap adds smaller images and additional details. Accompanying the spare narrative, valuable side notes supply specific lengths or distances and define their units of measure, accurately explain astronomical phenomena, and close with the provocative observation that “the observable universe is centered on us, but we are not in the center of the entire universe.”
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts. (afterword, websites, further reading) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4623-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
An unsuspecting student falls victim to the Math Curse when her teacher notes that ``You can think of almost everything as a math problem.'' Suddenly, everything is: ``I wake up at 7:15. It takes me 10 minutes to get dressed, 15 minutes to eat my breakfast, and 1 minute to brush my teeth . . . if my bus leaves at 8:00, will I make it on time?'' If it's not a time problem, it's equivalents (``How many inches in a foot?''), multiplication, nondecimal numbers, money combinations, and more. What's the cure? It comes to her in a dream: A problem with an answer is no problem at all. Smith's big paintings-cum-collage are, as usual, way strange, perfectly complementing the wild, postmodern page design with concatenations of small objects, fragments, and geometric shapes and figures, all placed on dark, grainy backgrounds. Another calculated triumph from the fevered brows that brought forth The Stinky Cheese Man (1992) and other instant classics, this one with a bit of brainwork deftly woven in. Readers can check their answers on the back cover. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-86194-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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