Plenty of well-designed, smoothly integrated special features only enhance this passionate, provocative scientific manifesto.
In a terrific example of e-bookmaking, animations, audio clips and interactive demos embellish the full text and already-memorable illustrations of this bestselling take on What Is So and What Ain’t.
In 12 chapters headed by questions from “Who was the first person?” and “Are we alone?” to “Why do bad things happen?” Dawkins (clearly no respecter of magical thinking or faith-based reality) opens with surveys of relevant myths or popular but mistaken beliefs. He then dismisses them to retrace in eminently readable prose the origins, characteristics and evolution of matter, life and language; explain the physical causes of seasons, rainbows and earthquakes; and look into chance and coincidence. His basic premise is that science guides us to a reality “more magical—in the best and most exciting sense of the word—than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle.” Small, brief gestures or changes of position further enliven art that, in a virtuosic variety of looks and styles, comments both informatively and wittily on the manually advanced narrative. Nearly every chapter contains a multimedia or interactive feature, such as a swiveling “Newton’s Cannon” that will fire cannonballs into orbit if correctly angled, brief audio remarks (or, in one case, a passage from Chaucer) by the author or a touch- and tilt-sensitive tour through the states of matter.
Plenty of well-designed, smoothly integrated special features only enhance this passionate, provocative scientific manifesto. (thumbnail-image chapter and page indexes) (iPad nonfiction app. 11 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Random House UK
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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