Children who like animals may find a new dream job in this informational volume.
A two-page introduction describes some basic “qualities and skills for working with animals,” such as “a kind, caring personality” and “a real passion to help them.” Each successive spread then introduces one or two jobs or careers, including the familiar neighborhood veterinarian, entomologist, and pet portrait artist, via a fictional representative’s narration. Each snapshot begins with an overview of why they came to this job and how they became qualified for it, continues with their daily tasks, and notes the “best” and “worst” parts of the job. A guide at the end helps readers trace their own skills, interests, and personality traits to find which jobs might be right for them. This oversized volume is attractively illustrated and represents a diversity of skin tones and hair textures. The thoughtful details about each career are helpful and thorough, and the first-person narration is inviting. However, the police dog handler’s job description will unsettle some readers: The dog is trained to apprehend “suspects by biting them on the arm and holding on until I give the command to let go,” a detail that won’t escape children who know incarcerated adults or who are already afraid of police—yet the woman of color who speaks says the hardest part of the job is staying fit to keep up with the dog.
An overall valuable volume with a major oversight. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61067-989-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A compendium of paranormal doings, natural horrors, and eerie wonders worldwide and (in several senses) beyond.
Maladroit title aside (“…in Bed” would make more sense, cautionwise), this collection of hauntings, cryptids, natural and historical mysteries, and general titillation (“Vampire bats might be coming for you!”) offers a broad array of reasons to stay wide awake. Arranged in no discernible order the 60-plus entries include ghostly sightings in the White House and various castles, body-burrowing guinea worms, the Nazca lines of Peru, Mothman and Nessie, the hastily abandoned city of Pripyat (which, thanks to the Chernobyl disaster, may be habitable again…in 24,000 years), monarch-butterfly migrations, and diverse rains of fish, frogs, fireballs, and unidentified slime. Each is presented in a busy whirl of narrative blocks, photos, graphics, side comments, and arbitrary “Fright-O-Meter” ratings (Paris’ “Creepy Catacombs” earn just a “4” out of 10 and black holes a “3,” but the aforementioned aerial amphibians a full “10”). The headers tend toward the lurid: “Jelly From Space,” “Zombie Ants,” “Mongolian Death Worm.” Claybourne sprinkles multiple-choice pop quizzes throughout for changes of pace.
A rich source of terrors both real and manufactured, equally effective in broad daylight or beneath the bedcovers. (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2841-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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In a large, handsome format, Tarnowska offers six tales plus an abbreviated version of the frame story, retold in formal but contemporary language and sandwiched between a note on the Nights’ place in her childhood in Lebanon and a page of glossary and source notes. Rather than preserve the traditional embedded structure and cliffhanger cutoffs, she keeps each story discrete and tones down the sex and violence. This structure begs the question of why Shahriyar lets Shahrazade [sic] live if she tells each evening’s tale complete, but it serves to simplify the reading for those who want just one tale at a time. Only the opener, “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” is likely to be familiar to young readers; in others a prince learns to control a flying “Ebony Horse” by “twiddling” its ears, contending djinn argue whether “Prince Kamar el Zaman [or] Princess Boudour” is the more beautiful (the prince wins) and in a Cinderella tale a “Diamond Anklet” subs for the glass slipper. Hénaff’s stylized scenes of domed cityscapes and turbaned figures add properly whimsical visual notes to this short but animated gathering. (Folktales. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84686-122-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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