A spectacular series kickoff featuring imaginative graphics and visual design that will provide even confirmed young...
An introduction to dino diversity through visual comparisons and infographics.
Small of trim size but rich in facts and insights, this set of images and charts mixes Jenkins’ typically realistic paper-collage animal portraits with variously colored silhouettes of modern or prehistoric figures. These are all arranged in ways that vividly clarify relative sizes, for instance, allowing viewers to understand at a glance (with a bar chart composed of stacks of bones) the very different quantities of fossil finds on each continent or graphically represent such big numbers as the devastating effects of (select) mass extinctions and the tiny time humans have existed on Earth compared to the reign of the dinosaurs. One- or two-sentence captions and side notes comment on the visual presentations, the index is annotated with additional facts, and the backmatter includes both a reasonably current reading list and a cogent reminder that much of what we know about dinosaurs is speculative. Reinforcing that last point, a schematic image of a Lythronax (a T. Rex relative) specimen in which the very few bones that are actual fossils and not reconstructions stand out in a vivid red will give museum visitors who think that the full skeletons they see on display are all original a whole new perspective. Companion title Earth: By the Numbers publishes simultaneously.
A spectacular series kickoff featuring imaginative graphics and visual design that will provide even confirmed young dinophiles with fresh food for thought. (maps, glossary) (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-85095-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fragmentary memoir, but warm, humorous and engaging overall.
Anecdotal paintings and reminiscences of two childhood years spent in China, by an artist now in her 90s.
Following up Once Upon a Full Moon (2007), an account of her family’s journey from Canada to Kwangtung province, Quan recalls 17 experiences or incidents during the stay. These include feasting on New Year’s Day (“Mama steamed a whole chicken inside a winter melon and made sweet red and green bean paste…”), gathering to watch a teen relative take a bucket shower (“We all laughed with glee”), and welcoming both a new piglet and, later, a new baby brother. Opposite each memory, a full-page, loosely brushed watercolor in a naïve style adds both cultural and comical notes with depictions of small, active or intent figures in village dress and settings. It’s a sunny picture, but there are references to the real dangers of pirates and brigands, as well as a comment about the author’s beloved Popo (grandmother) walking to church on bound feet. These, along with a final parting made particularly poignant since the baby, being foreign-born, had to be left in China for several years, keep it from becoming a sugary nostalgiafest.
A fragmentary memoir, but warm, humorous and engaging overall. (afterword, with photo of Popo) (Illustrated memoir. 6-9)Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-77049-383-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
Sad indeed, but a little bland—though less traumatic in the telling than the stories of Jumbo or the Faithful Elephants...
In this true tale of an elephant that crushed a keeper after peacefully giving zoo visitors rides for nearly 40 years, Fenton tones the drama down to near nonexistence (for better or worse).
Arriving at the Melbourne Zoo as a youngster, Queenie began giving rides in 1905. She became such a fixture that children wrote her letters, her birthday was celebrated each year, and she even marched in the Centenary Floral Parade in 1934. After creating an endearing but not anthropomorphic portrait of her pachyderm protagonist, the author, warning that “Queenie’s story has a sad ending,” goes on to explain that even though the 1944 killing might have been just an accident, “the gentle Indian elephant was put to sleep.” Furthermore, she was never replaced; the elephants in today’s zoo occupy a habitat where they can “do just what elephants like to do.” Neither the incident itself nor Queenie’s end are specifically described or depicted, and Gouldthorpe’s illustrations, which look like old, hand-tinted photographs, put a nostalgic distance between viewers and events.
Sad indeed, but a little bland—though less traumatic in the telling than the stories of Jumbo or the Faithful Elephants (1988) killed at the Tokyo Zoo. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6375-9
Page Count: 25
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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