The inimitable Attenborough conducts a fascinating interactive tour of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens and its legendary collection of fantastic greenery from around the globe.
Plants, as surprising and remarkable as they may be, are not the most dynamic subjects of study. But this app changes all of that with exciting features like “Plant Time,” which grants users the godlike power to make a flower actually bloom—and reverse the process—right on their iPads. An animated tree on the attractive home page grows from the center of one of the garden's conservatories, inviting users to join Attenborough on a thoroughly engaging exploration of any one of 10 leaves devoted to a different section of the original three-hour documentary series, which originally ran in the U.K. Five other “clickable” leaves lead readers inside other areas of the Gardens, where users can explore much of the facility through self-controlled panoramic views. The video and still photography are vivid and look exceptionally lifelike on third-generation iPads. The app is light on text, but what there is of it nicely complements the presentation. The famed naturalist is in exceedingly fine form as the kindly, enthusiastic and authoritative guide. A generous behind-the-scenes option delves into the making of the 3-D documentary and gives a glimpse of some of the magic tricks—like a camera mounted to a remotely controlled Minicopter to mimic the view of flying insects—the filmmakers used in its making. The app does a remarkably good job of inculcating an appreciation of the plant world. Ultraviolet cinematography even exposes the astounding property many plants have to appear one way to humans and an entirely different way to pollinating insects. The open-ended presentation means that there is no particular starting or endpoint, so users can essentially meander around the grounds of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens any way they like. A captivating experience that encourages users to keep coming back for repeat visits.
Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Serengeti Entertainment Ltd.
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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