Light on actual science but big on creativity.
GoldieBlox, the internet’s favorite girls-and-engineering toy, expands into chapter books.
After an unfortunate incident involving launching the second floor of Goldie’s old school into orbit—the Blox School, where the white girl’s mother teaches a handful of students—results in the school’s closure, Goldie’s sent to the prestigious Higgs Bozon Prep. Despite the company of her best friend, Li Zhang, a Chinese-American boy who loves physics and skateboarding, HiBo’s rigid rules and conventional conformity are no fit for a wild, creative inventor like Goldie. So she rounds up a team of potential allies: those who want to purge her zaniness from the school (black coder and fashionista Ruby Rails; purple-haired, brown-skinned, shy musician Val; and white, snobby Zeek Zander, the mayor’s son, who excels at spending money and math). Through working together in the rebuild (and catching the mayor in a net to force him to listen to their arguments about why the Blox School must reopen), Goldie builds strong friendships with Ruby and Val, who decide that the inventive, fun chaos that disorganized, impulsive Goldie brings makes it worth having her around. There isn’t much in the way of STEM content in this series opener, a proliferation of gadgets notwithstanding, but that may come in time, and the affirmation of the role of the imagination in tech is a welcome one.
Light on actual science but big on creativity. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-55634-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
An introduction to Venus that shows the planet at her most verbally and visually vivacious.
The solar system’s hottest diva struts her stuff.
The titular character’s claim that she’s the only goddess among the planetary gods may leave partisans of “Gaea” (technically not an official name, but still) feeling a little miffed. That aside, Venus still has plenty to crow about—from having higher surface temperatures than Mercury, to sporting a day that’s longer than her year, to spinning so the sun comes up in the west. Joining McAnulty’s other solar system soliloquies with the same engaging mix of facts and attitude (“Earth has clouds. I don’t…just have clouds. I’m smothered in them!”), Venus shines up from the page. She sports a proud expression on her broad face, whether hovering with windswept golden locks over a seashell like her Botticellian counterpart or floating in space, waving to her earthly and celestial fans with stubby limbs. Closing with a review quiz and a roundup of basic statistics, this animated planetary self-portrait will give young readers more reason than ever to pay proper attention to the brightest of our non-stellar astronomical neighbors.
An introduction to Venus that shows the planet at her most verbally and visually vivacious. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250334473
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Odd Dot
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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