Has a certain appeal for its art and premise, but it’s sloppy in both research and assumptions.
A highlight-reel history of shoes, skates, toilets, toothbrushes, and other common household items.
In a breezy style reflective of this Czech import’s slapdash approach, Sekaninová offers a mix of basic facts, debatable factoids (“The first ever double bed was made in Ancient Rome”), and not-so-buried assumptions: “But what did the first perfume look like? And who was the first woman to use it?” Not to mention a Eurocentric focus that only rarely widens to include other cultures or continents, and outright errors like a shoutout to eyeglass-lens maker “Alexander Spinosa” (actually Alessandro della Spina, who’s not definitively their inventor) and a present-tense reference to an 18-karat-gold toilet that hasn’t actually been available to view (and use!) in New York’s Guggenheim Museum for a few years. Except that everyone in her human cast, from prehistoric squatters on, has pale skin, Chupíková does better with galleries of small but exactly detailed images of archaeological artifacts, dolls, umbrellas, related inventions like zippers and coat hangers that expand the general scope beyond the main 11 items, and historical costume (mostly European) of diverse eras. Surveys of inventions are hardly rare, but by sticking to the everyday, this is worth note as a natural companion to more technology-oriented flyovers. There is not a bibliography or even any scrap of sourcing to indicate where Sekaninová found her information. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Has a certain appeal for its art and premise, but it’s sloppy in both research and assumptions. (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-80-00-06128-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Albatros Media
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A browser’s delight, despite lowering the bar considerably for publishable poetry.
From Alexander the Great’s steed Bucephalus to Dolly the sheep and the first Shamu, a gallery of animals that have played roles, large or small, in human history.
Modeled on the collaborators’ previous Presidential Pets (2012), each of the chronologically ordered entries features a full-page cartoon caricature opposite a mix of at least marginally relevant facts (“Horses sleep both lying down and standing up”) and observations that feel more like filler than anything else. “Josephine changed her name from Rose because Napoleon didn’t like it,” reads one in the piece on a dog that fished Napoleon Bonaparte out of the Mediterranean; “Leonardo never married or had children,” reads another on Leonardo da Vinci’s propensity for freeing caged birds. Also as in Pets, Moberg introduces each chosen creature in verse that ranges from inane to merely laughably inept: Spotting penguins in South America, “Magellan was surprised / That creatures used to snow / Also liked the sun / And life as Latinos!” Some passages are printed over brightly colored backgrounds and so are hard to read. Furthermore, the author provides no sources whatsoever. Still, fans of Keltie Thomas’ Animals That Changed the World (2010) will find new creatures aplenty here, along with the familiar likes of Balto, Koko and Punxsutawney Phil.
A browser’s delight, despite lowering the bar considerably for publishable poetry. (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62354-048-7
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
As better pictures are available and the humor is too heavy-handed to add style points, that dismissal can serve for this...
An irreverent introduction to China’s long line of emperors, with sidelong glances at life in the outsized but cloistered imperial palace.
The simply phrased answer to a modern child’s titular question offers a jumble of general observations about forms of address, ceremonial duties, imperial officials and consorts, how members of the imperial family were educated, what they ate, and what emperors were expected to do and be. Readers will likely come away more confused than enlightened. The Forbidden City itself, built about 600 years ago, is neither mapped nor described here in any detail; such terms as “eunuch” and “consort” are defined long after they are first used (if at all); and Chinese expressions are discussed (and in one case translated two different ways) without being actually shown. Thick-lined cartoon figures in traditional dress, many with almost identical features, add a comical flavor. They pose on nearly every page with captions and comments in speech balloons that have, to say the least, an anachronistic ring: an emperor’s whiny “I’m stressed out,” is echoed a few pages later by a trio of “pregnant imperial consorts” racing to produce the first-born child; and the deposed last emperor, Puyi, closes with a casual “See ya!”
As better pictures are available and the humor is too heavy-handed to add style points, that dismissal can serve for this whole sloppy effort. (website) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9893776-6-9
Page Count: 108
Publisher: China Institute in America
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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