Moving on from Bedtime (1999), Swain and Smith turn to hair as a cultural statement. From people who shaved their heads and those who chose to be hairy, to people who grew beards or wore elaborate hairstyles, preferences often changed throughout history. The Ancient Egyptians were not a hairy bunch, whereas the Greeks were, often wearing long beards into battle. That is, until they realized that a beard could be grabbed by the enemy and used against them. Razors soon caught on. The thinning hair of King Louis XIV led to a run on the wigmaker’s shops, while 18th-century European women had towering mountains of hair that were coated with lard and flour and lasted for weeks or months. Native American and African hairdos reflected the styles of their tribes; while the Chinese queue was originally ordered by the invading Manchus, but caught on to become a popular style. Hair adornments are also addressed, including the Egyptian method of keeping cool by placing a cone of perfumed (and melting) beeswax on the top of the head. Swain’s mixture of humor and history makes this an effective look, not just at hairstyles, but also at social change. While more heavily Western, she has done a nice job of representing many non-Western cultures. Whatever the style, the message is clear: hair grows quickly, easily changes styles, and can demonstrate to people anything from religious or political views and occupation, to social or marital status. Smith’s watercolor-and-ink illustrations fit hairstyle and era together seamlessly. Each page features not only the hair of the time, but also the clothing, furniture, and some aspects of everyday lives. A cut above. (hair facts, bibliography) (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-8234-1522-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Science at its best: informative and gross.
Why not? Because “IT’S FULL OF GERMS.”
Of course, Ben-Barak rightly notes, so is everything else—from your socks to the top of Mount Everest. Just to demonstrate, he invites readers to undertake an exploratory adventure (only partly imaginary): First touch a certain seemingly blank spot on the page to pick up a microbe named Min, then in turn touch teeth, shirt, and navel to pick up Rae, Dennis, and Jake. In the process, readers watch crews of other microbes digging cavities (“Hey kid, brush your teeth less”), spreading “lovely filth,” and chowing down on huge rafts of dead skin. For the illustrations, Frost places dialogue balloons and small googly-eyed cartoon blobs of diverse shape and color onto Rundgren’s photographs, taken using a scanning electron microscope, of the fantastically rugged surfaces of seemingly smooth paper, a tooth, textile fibers, and the jumbled crevasses in a belly button. The tour concludes with more formal introductions and profiles for Min and the others: E. coli, Streptococcus, Aspergillus niger, and Corynebacteria. “Where will you take Min tomorrow?” the author asks teasingly. Maybe the nearest bar of soap.
Science at its best: informative and gross. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17536-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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