A fascinating if focused look at an inventor and innovator who changed America.
Henry Ford is well known for the Model T and the assembly line, but he made many other contributions to the economic health of the nation.
He was also concerned with finding ways to improve farming methods and ease the heavy burdens of farmers. He built reliable tractors from spare car parts. The Depression exacerbated existing troubles. Ford already recycled and repurposed nearly everything at his factory and thought that he could find new uses for farm crops as well. He created a laboratory and hired scientists to study grains, fruits, and vegetables, and they finally determined that soybeans were the answer. The team developed soybean-based paint, fabric, and lightweight plastic that could form most of the parts for his cars. The vast amount of soybeans needed kept hundreds of farmers solvent and even prosperous. After Ford’s death, the soybean continued to be converted into dozens of products way beyond his initial plan. Thomas presents the facts as if in direct conversation with readers, with clear and accessible explanations. Fotheringham’s boldly hued, action-packed digital illustrations are bright and cheery; they depict an all-white cast. Extensive backmatter includes further information on Ford and soybeans, two recipes, a timeline, and further resources. Absent from both it and the primary story is any reference to Ford’s virulent anti-Semitism.
A fascinating if focused look at an inventor and innovator who changed America. (notes, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62979-639-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts.
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 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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