Christian and Felix (Can It Really Rain Frogs?, 1997, etc.) take readers on a globe-spanning tour of the natural world, pointing out its wonders topically with chapters on canyons, great rivers and waterfalls, glaciers and icebergs, caves, mountains, and forests. Plenty of boxed side comments, plus titles, boldface terms, and random words in a variety of type styles are nicely designed to catch a browser's eye; recurring gnomic representations of Christian mingle with a plethora of casually drawn views and diagrams. The authors have a gift for choosing memorable facts and anecdotes, but are guilty of oversimplification (e.g., ``The air in high levels of the atmosphere contains less oxygen''); several of the low-tech demonstrations are recipes for domestic disaster; since the rest of the book is about water and landforms, the chapter on forests is tangential. Written with enthusiasm, the book is too slapdash to be more than superficially useful. (index, not seen, maps, diagrams, glossary) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 27, 1998
ISBN: 0-471-19617-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In an entry in the Turning Point Inventions series, Wallace invites readers to consider the drawbacks of earlier forms of artificial daylight, from wooden torches to arc lamps, then retraces Thomas Edison’s intense, deliberate search for a practical electric light. Edison, inspired by a book of science experiments to become an inventor, combined a searching intellect with bulldog stubbornness, and can be credited not just with the light bulb itself, but also with the far more difficult accomplishment of engineering public acceptance of electricity in order to create a market for his invention. As much a readable character portrait as it is an account of the origin of a now-ubiquitous widget, Wallace’s book is generously illustrated with contemporary black- and-white and full-color photographs and views, and capped by a fold-out look at a lightbulb’s parts and assembly. Illuminating, of course. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82816-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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