Not even close to nearly complete, this oversized browsers' book nevertheless presents a huge smorgasbord of human invention, with histories of the earth and of life as hors d'oeuvres. Arranged in spreads, each with four strips of small full-color illustrations over four- or five-line running captions, there's something for almost everyone: dinosaurs, homes and other buildings, clothing (over a hundred tiny figures, sporting animal skins to denim), weapons, means of communication, medical and manufacturing techniques, and page after page of ground, air, and space vehicles. A biographical index rounds on the volume. Conventional depictions and points of view give the art a drably functional look that doesn't measure up in visual impact to works such as the Eyewitness Visual Dictionaries, and though Platt (Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections: Castle, 1994, etc.) injects a little wit (``In the beginning a journey meant two things, both of them feet''), his bits of fact and historical context soon begin to wear. The cheeky title and breadth of coverage give this an immediate appeal that is also likely to be ephemeral. (index) (Nonfiction. 7-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1995
ISBN: 0-7894-0206-8
Page Count: 76
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
The author of Cod’s Tale (2001) again demonstrates a dab hand at recasting his adult work for a younger audience. Here the topic is salt, “the only rock eaten by human beings,” and, as he engrossingly demonstrates, “the object of wars and revolutions” throughout recorded history and before. Between his opening disquisition on its chemical composition and a closing timeline, he explores salt’s sources and methods of extraction, its worldwide economic influences from prehistoric domestication of animals to Gandhi’s Salt March, its many uses as a preservative and industrial product, its culinary and even, as the source for words like “salary” and “salad,” its linguistic history. Along with lucid maps and diagrams, Schindler supplies detailed, sometimes fanciful scenes to go along, finishing with a view of young folk chowing down on orders of French fries as ghostly figures from history look on. Some of Kurlansky’s claims are exaggerated (the Erie and other canals were built to transport more than just salt, for instance), and there are no leads to further resources, but this salutary (in more ways than one) micro-history will have young readers lifting their shakers in tribute. (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-23998-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
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