A lively and captivating book weakened by its narrow cultural focus.
Readers are invited to approach fairy tales with scientific curiosity.
This collection includes summaries of 25 fairy tales, 22 of which are European, although the full-color, cartoon-style illustrations feature ethnically diverse children. For each, information regarding the story’s origin and variations is provided. Following each summary, the author discusses related scientific concepts and provides detailed steps for performing one or more experiments or activities, complete with scientific terms, definitions, diagrams, and reflective questions. Following “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the author includes a discussion of vital signs. Also included are steps for readers to determine their heart rates. Following “The Three Little Pigs,” the author provides a discussion of forces, including how the wind can cause structural failure. Readers are encouraged to test this using a ping-pong ball and blow-dryer. The author’s humorous and satirical retelling of each tale is key, offering a fresh perspective on these classics and encouraging readers to begin thinking like scientists. The rich heritages of Africa, Indigenous North America, Oceania, and Latin America are entirely absent, while a story set in China by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is included; alongside the story of Ali Baba, the two other non-Western tales are about possibly real Asian historical figures—Mulan and Vikramaditya—choices out of keeping with the European stories. The cursory explanations of past societies’ timekeeping abilities and fear of witches feel ahistorical.
A lively and captivating book weakened by its narrow cultural focus. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-25761-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Odd Dot
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Nominally aimed at children 8 and up, this may have more appeal to parents of graduates of Baby University and like series.
In all, probability.
In bright and stylishly retro, if unsystematic, fashion, Ferrón and Altarriba present our current bewildering picture of reality. They start with Newton and his laws, then forge ahead in not particularly chronological order past: Planck’s notion of quanta, the discovery of the photon, subatomic particles and anti-particles, molecules, the uncertainty principle, quantum entanglement, Marie Curie’s work, the tunnel effect, the Standard Model, and the recently verified Higgs boson. In their haste to cover so much they sometimes neglect to define or explain terms when first used, make a misleadingly backward claim that the “higher the frequency of a photon, the more energy it will have,” and include data such as atomic weights in a periodic table and mass numbers for the 16 types of particles (e.g., “=2.4 Me/c2” for up quarks) without comment or explanation. They also show a tendency to anthropomorphize (“Some atoms have such a big nucleus that they start to feel ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’ ”), close with a timeline that contains a certain amount of unexplained new material, and finish off with a spread of untranslated equations and constants. If not enlightenment—an elusive goal—readers will come away with plenty of new vocabulary, plus nodding acquaintances with Einstein and other greats, Schrödinger’s cat, and the central role of quantum physics in current and future tech.
Nominally aimed at children 8 and up, this may have more appeal to parents of graduates of Baby University and like series. (Informational picture book. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78708-013-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Button Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
The author of When Bugs Were Big, Plants Were Strange, and Tetrapods Stalked the Earth (2003) continues her droll but dependable tour of deep prehistory, focusing here on the flora, fauna and fungi of the Silurian and Devonian Periods, approximately 360 to 44 million years ago. This was the time when larger forms of life began to emerge on land, while, among the far richer variety of marine animals, fish wriggled to the top, thanks to newly developed jaws which allowed them “to say good-bye to a monotonous diet of teensy stuff. Now fish could grab, slice and dice to their heart’s content.” By the end, soil, forests and, of course, feet had also appeared. Fearlessly folding in tongue-challenging names and mixing simply drawn reconstructions and maps with goofy flights of fancy—on the first spread Robin Mite and Friar Millipede are caught on a stroll through Sherwood Moss Patch, and on the last, genial nautiloid Amphicyrtoceras plugs the previous volume—Bonner serves up a second heaping course of science that will both stick to the ribs and tickle them. (index, resource lists, time line) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4263-0078-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
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