A talented novelist (Hating Alison Ashley, 1985) turns in ten compact, briskly varied short tales. The selections include the gleeful ``Little Beast,'' in which the besieged outcast at a boarding school wreaks heady revenge on her tormentors; and the guilt-laden ``Octopi,'' about a young girl who uses pathos to insinuate herself into the life of a new school secretary. In ``The Key,'' gang-initiate Kevin has a change of heart and short- circuits a burglary, while ``We'll Look After You'' artfully twists Good Samaritanship into a nightmare Ö la Stephen King's Misery. Pithy, provocative, and plenty of fun. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-670-83212-X
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
Striking color photos of icebergs, explorers, flora, and fauna provide the primary appeal here, while the choppy, somewhat disjointed text ranges over prehistory, exploration, recent scientific expeditions, and current efforts to protect the continent. There's much to intrigue: ice fish that lack hemoglobin; dinosaur fossils; pollen samples from ice cores 180,000 years old; frozen lichens growing beneath the surface of sandstone rocks. Winckler and Rodgers's Our Endangered Planet. Antarctica (p. 725) is more carefully organized and coherent, but the photos here are more spectacular. Brief glossary; index. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-73850-X
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superficial look at the cultures of various regional groups in both Americas. A typical entry includes three paragraphs on the Incas, a map, and three small, dark photos of ruins and an Inca girl today. Many of the archival and museum diorama photos are muddy, small, marginally related to the text, and poorly captioned. There are no entries for pottery or basketry, though both were important to many of the cultures here. The arrangement also makes it difficult to compare the cultures of various tribes; the visual material is extensive, but unexceptional. The brief index has no entry for ``kayak,'' ``umiak,'' and ``bullboat,'' all described in the text and listed in the glossary. Disappointing. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-528-83494-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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