Big tech at its biggest; weird science at its weirdest: readers will echo Sophie’s “It’s amazeballs!” (glossary, resource...
Two young visitors take simultaneous tours of the world of subatomic particles and of the largest scientific instrument ever built.
As in her picture book Stella Brite and the Dark Matter Mystery (illustrated by Meredith Johnson, 2006), Latta brushes a thin gloss of storyline over a series of lucid lectures delivered largely in dialogue. Following an introduction to quarks and other components of the Standard Model of particle physics that’s capped by a quick trip back to the Big Bang, science-minded Sophie leads her more artistically inclined cousin Nick to a meeting with two grad-student tour guides at CERN. From there it’s on to view parts of the Large Hadron Collider, from a locomotive-sized linear accelerator to the 27-kilometer tunnel in which protons zip to incredible collisions that have, most recently, led to glimpses of the elusive Higgs boson. In panels that are large enough to accommodate hefty dialogue balloons without looking overcrowded, Weigel mixes realistically drawn people—including Einstein, Peter Higgs, and other renowned scientists—with intricately detailed devices and playful but illuminating visualizations of events at both subatomic and universewide levels. In the black-and-white illustrations everyone has light skin, but Sophie is biracial, and some figures may have Asian features. Summary looks at particle physics’ pioneers and certain still-unsolved mysteries are appended.
Big tech at its biggest; weird science at its weirdest: readers will echo Sophie’s “It’s amazeballs!” (glossary, resource lists) (Graphic fiction/nonfiction hybrid. 10-14)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4677-8551-8
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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