Fresh and informal but stronger on background than hands-on experiences.
A highlights reel of the periodic table of elements, with 24 experiments and demonstrations.
Connolly (The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science, 2010, etc.) focuses on 20 of the table’s common “key players,” providing for each accounts of its historic discovery, how it bonds or otherwise behaves with other substances, common uses, quick snapshots of neighboring elements, and one or two experiments. These last are the weakest link, as, for instance, the author simply instructs budding chemists to buy trick birthday candles rather than try to make them, pulls a bait and switch with a project for neon that uses a fluorescent bulb (“Sure, it’s filled with a different gas…but the experiment gets the same result”), and, thanks to garbled instructions, leaves the circuit unclosed in a supposed demonstration of graphite’s electrical conductivity. In her very simple cartoon illustrations Bean doesn’t always pick up the slack (placing the wire and nail in a potato “battery” close together rather than, as the instructions specify, as far apart as possible) but does at least portray a diverse cast of young makers along with decorative historical and fanciful images. Otherwise, the author further punches up a set of colorfully delivered tales of discovery with plenty of side notes on hazardous products and isotopes, capped by a closing rogues’ gallery of particularly dangerous elements, and also offers lucid pictures of chemical processes and how the periodic table is organized.
Fresh and informal but stronger on background than hands-on experiences. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7611-8010-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This survey of body systems tries too hard for a broad audience, mixing paragraphs of lines like, “Without bones we would just be bags of goop,” printed in slightly larger type, with brief but specific discussions of osteoblasts, myofibrils, peristalsis and like parts and functions. Seven single or double gatefolds allow the many simple, brightly painted illustrations space to range from thumbnail size to forearm-length. Many of the visuals offer inside and outside views of a multicultural cast—of children, by and large, though the sexual organs are shown on headless trunks and the final picture provides a peek inside a pregnant mother. Even if younger readers don’t stumble over the vocabulary while older ones reject the art as babyish, this isn’t going to make the top shelf; information is presented in a scattershot way, the text and pictures don’t consistently correspond—three muscles needed to kick a soccer ball are named but not depicted, for instance, and an entire tongue is labeled “taste bud”—and the closing resource list is both print only and partly adult. (glossary, bibliography, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4027-7091-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
It’s not exactly an untold tale, but this new telling is worth the read.
A solid new entry in Mann’s exemplary tour of the modern world’s architectural wonders (The Taj Mahal, 2008, etc.).
Even sticking to the basic facts, as the author does, the story of how Lady Liberty was conceived, constructed and bestowed makes a compelling tale. Pointing to the disparate long-term outcomes of the American and French revolutions to explain why the U.S. system of government became so admired in France, Mann takes the statue from Edouard Laboulaye’s pie-in-the-sky proposal at a dinner party in 1865 to the massive opening ceremonies in 1886. Along the way, she highlights the techniques that sculptor Bartholdi used to scale up his ambitious model successfully and the long struggle against public indifference and skepticism on both sides of the Atlantic to fund both the monument itself and its base. Witschonke supplements an array of period photos and prints with full-page or larger painted reconstructions of Bartholdi’s studio and workshop, of the statue’s piecemeal creation and finally of the Lady herself, properly copper colored as she initially was, presiding over New York’s crowded harbor. As she still does.
It’s not exactly an untold tale, but this new telling is worth the read. (measurements, bibliography, "The New Colossus") (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-931414-43-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Mikaya Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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