A tale that’s part high jinks, part detailed science lesson, which will appeal to a specific niche of young readers.
A young, smug scientist gets more than he bargained for in this middle-grade story.
Isaac Farmer is sure that he’ll win the school science fair. His “PTB Energy House” is mostly lifted from things he found on the internet, but he’s still able to charm the judges into thinking the project is a genuine example of a new alternative energy source. But when he includes a secret insult to alternative-energy technology in the project’s title, things go south. His science teacher arranges a meeting with his parents and the principal. If Isaac wants to attend the state science fair, the principal says, he’ll have to change his project, and to make that happen, he’s calling in help. Professor “Bowtie” Murphy agrees to mentor the boy while he builds real technology for the fair with the help of a former student who owns a solar-tech company. Soon, Isaac takes a shine to the project. When Isaac’s friend Jimi accidentally adds a gross ingredient to his solar panel, the result is electric—and the grown-ups are keen to figure out its secret. After further experiments and encounters with lawyers, there’s a public unveiling of the solar panel that’s also a test of Isaac’s social skills. Rink (Jimi & Isaac 3a: The Mars Mission, 2010, etc.) makes sure that there’s no shortage of tangible scientific information in this story, from an explanation of a matrix that Isaac creates to a discussion of photoelectric chemicals. The amount of technical jargon, though, may deter readers who aren’t already devoted to science. It’s also a little hard to believe that a key element of the story is Isaac’s smart-aleck behavior, as the most egregious act that he engages in is using the word “duh” as a constant retort. In addition, the chapters in which grown-ups do most of the talking tend to drag. However, those that feature Isaac and Jimi being giggling middle schoolers feel authentic.
A tale that’s part high jinks, part detailed science lesson, which will appeal to a specific niche of young readers.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4564-2254-7
Page Count: 130
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Updike has revised a set of 12 short poems, one per month, first published in 1965, and Hyman’s busy, finely detailed scenes replace the original edition’s illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. The verses are written in a child’s voice—“The chickadees/Grow plump on seed/That Mother pours/Where they can feed”—and commemorate seasonal weather, flowers, food, and holidays. In the paintings a multiracial, all-ages cast does the same in comfortable, semi-rural New England surroundings, sitting at a table cutting out paper hearts, wading through reeds with a net under a frog’s watchful eye, picnicking, contemplating a leafless tree outside for “November” and a decorated one inside for “December.” The thoughts and language are slightly elevated but not beyond the ken of children, and the pictures enrich the poetry with specific, often amusing, incidents. (Poetry. 6-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1445-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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