A fun and fact-filled look at footwear that will find its audience.
The history of what nearly everyone wears on their feet.
This brisk account moves from a description of ancient woven bark sandals discovered in Oregon in 1938 to the use of latex by Mayan and Olmec peoples to the incorporation of rubber into the soles of shoes for croquet players to footwear endorsements by athletes like Michael Jordan. Bright colors feature throughout the exuberant cartoon drawings along with plenty of sidebars and photos spotlighting diverse people, both famous and everyday. Drimmer covers the history of familiar brands and logos—the rivalry between the Dassler brothers, who founded Adidas and Puma; the development of Blue Ribbon Sports into Nike; the reason that Converse shoes carry the name Chuck Taylor. She avoids discussing economic, human-capital concerns about the manufacture of what are often hugely expensive and collectible shoes. An intriguing chapter on future developments for sneakers mentions the sound-absorbent sneakers that T’Challa wears in Black Panther and a real-life attempt at making a similarly quiet pair. The narrative is a bit thin (and neither source notes nor suggestions for further exploration are offered), but overall, it’s a clear, close-up look at an invention (versatile, comfortable shoes) that captures affection and loyalty, plus an exhortation to young innovators to think about their own spin on the product. It’s also an interesting examination of the ways that professional athletics and personal exercise have evolved over the last century.
A fun and fact-filled look at footwear that will find its audience. (timeline, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781454944966
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
An informative, if patchwork, mishmash.
This Swiss import offers readers the inside scoop on glasses, from their history to how they’re manufactured today.
Rightly recognizing that younger readers will find their expansive take on the topic something of a grind, Stevan and Vigneault tuck episodes of a wordless comic featuring a child with superpowered spectacles and other tangential diversions into the discourse. In between, following a well-illustrated timeline that takes the story of specs from premodern pieces of rock crystal to Ben Franklin’s bifocals and the first contact lenses, the book flits from eye anatomy to myopia and other common malfunctions, what a visit to an ophthalmologist is like, proper care of frames and lenses, optical instruments such as telescopes and magnifying glasses, examples of “spectacled” animals, and optical illusions. Stevan also glances briefly at smart glasses and even offers some comfort to those who have been teased for wearing glasses. A brief glossary lists cognates for eyeglasses in Yoruba and other languages, and in the cartoon illustrations, a racially diverse cast that includes blind and wheelchair-using members model eyeglasses of many styles. A misleading claim that eyes only come in “black, green, brown, blue, or beige” and a confusing one in the discussion of diopters designating excellent eyesight as “10/10” rather than the more common (in the United States, anyway) “20/20” may be translation issues; in general the infodump is solid enough, if not very deep.
An informative, if patchwork, mishmash. (review quiz, answer key, educators’ resources, link to printable worksheets) (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9783039640263
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Helvetiq
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Clotted with facts, it barely scratches the surface when it comes to immunological details or ethical issues.
Historical background for readers hazy on the whys and wherefores of vaccines.
Polinsky traces the development of vaccines from 16th-century reports of inoculation against the “speckled monster” of smallpox in what is described as merely “Asia” to the release in 2020 of vaccines for Covid-19. The narrative is dense, injected with names, dates, and scientific terms. Unfortunately, it’s already somewhat dated and turns notably skimpy when it comes to describing how the Covid-19 vaccines were developed. More disturbingly, although the author comes down hard on the author of a since-discredited 1998 claim that certain vaccines cause autism, she notes without justification or comment that Lady Montagu and even Jonas Salk tried out vaccines on their own children and that researchers mass-cultured the polio virus in “tissue from human embryos.” Figures, White or light-skinned, stand in static poses uttering wooden declamations (“Daniel Oliver, my boy, you have just received the first vaccine in American history!”). Ginevra cuts a few corners, pairing the writer’s blithe assurances about how safe the treatments are to multiple views of children being stuck, scratched, or bandaged. In one disquieting scene, we see polio victims in iron lungs as bodiless heads. Readers concerned about viral diseases and their treatment (who isn’t these days?) will come away somewhat better informed—but hardly soothed. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Clotted with facts, it barely scratches the surface when it comes to immunological details or ethical issues. (glossary, multimedia resource list, index) (Informational picture book. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2022
ISBN: 1-7284-4872-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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