An attractive volume digs deeply into stories of ancient American skeletons.
Walker, a Sibert Award winner, and Owsley, division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, join forces to bring alive the history of Paleoamericans, a term used in the book to mean human remains older than 8,000 years. The narrative focuses on the Kennewick man, a skeleton found in Kennewick, Wash., in 1996, but it also looks at Paleoamerican remains from Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and California. It describes the exhaustive detail in which scientists study the Paleoamerican skeletons, artifacts found with them and excavation sites. Smooth writing, although not as compelling as Walker’s Written in Bone (2009), takes readers through two intensive exams of the Kennewick skeleton done five years apart (Owsley was a member of the second examination team). Juxtaposing the two exams illustrates how new technologies and fresh eyes can change scientists’ understanding of such remains, a major theme throughout the book. Another recurring topic concerns how the Paleoamerican findings shed light on the origins and routes of humans who first settled North America, important questions still unresolved. Color photographs and diagrams with helpful captions extend the text; occasional sidebars expand on topics like bone fractures and radiocarbon dating. The final chapter highlights a fascinating reconstruction of the Kennewick man’s face and head. A special treat for archaeology buffs. (source notes, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7613-7457-2
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A fresh and intriguing manual of tremendous use for English-language manga fans.
An engrossing guide to manga symbols translated from Japanese.
Kouno, an award-winning Japanese manga artist, offers a detailed look into the world of manpu, the iconography used in manga, which comprise everything from symbols hovering around characters’ heads and bodies to elements in the backgrounds of the panels. In his introduction, Tokyo-based author, reporter, and translator Matt Alt describes the rich history of manpu, from symbols adopted from foreign cartoonists to ones developed by Japanese artists for what was initially a national readership; today manga and anime adaptations have achieved phenomenal global success. Surprisingly, this is the first English-language guide to understanding manpu. The work opens with a table of contents showing each symbol and the pages where it appears. Kouno’s manga panels portray each manpu in context, with explanatory text on the side; many manpu appear on multiple pages, reinforcing readers’ grasp of their meaning. Some will be intuitive to Western readers, but others are deeply embedded in a Japanese cultural context that’s explained in text boxes. An interesting afterword teaches the flow of manga reading, information that will be particularly helpful for beginners. This is a useful book for those who are looking to get into manga but don’t know where to start, but it’s also riveting reading for anyone interested in manpu’s cultural roots.
A fresh and intriguing manual of tremendous use for English-language manga fans. (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781772943085
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Udon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Challenging but replete with stimulating insights.
Interweaving prose and graphic art, Hendrix explores the lives, faith, intellectual world, and long, complex friendship of two titans of modern fantasy.
As in The Faithful Spy (2018), Hendrix’s hybrid-format biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this volume charges hard into deep and difficult territory—tracking, for instance, C.S. “Jack” Lewis’ progression from naïve believer to staunch atheist to profoundly religious thinker and probing reasons for the friction that grew between him and his close friend J.R.R. “Tollers” Tolkien in the 1950s. Tracing the shaping of their novels while contrasting the styles and personalities of the pair as they egged one another on, Hendrix also fills in the intellectual background with discursions into the differences between fairy tales and myths, largely delivered in extended graphic segments by an affectionately caricatured wizard and lion as they squire readers through a metaphorical series of significantly labeled doors. Though the author sets off direct quotes with asterisks and carefully sources them, he invents some dialogue; for a happily-ever-after ending, he’s also invented a loving reconciliation scene. Hendrix’s claim (although rooted in Eurocentric bias) that “these two tweedy middle-aged academics just so happened to re-enchant the world” carries plenty of heft. The monochrome art is charming and cues a younger audience than the text, which is complex conceptually as well as in its vocabulary and cultural and historical references.
Challenging but replete with stimulating insights. (author’s note, context on myths and fairy tales, notes on research and authenticity, glossary, endnotes, bibliography, index) (Graphic biography. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781419746345
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Abrams Fanfare
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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