A timely, edge-of-your-seat read that’s equally riveting for chess players and nonplayers alike.
The true story of a historic chess match between the world champion and a supercomputer.
It’s May 3, 1997. Garry Kasparov has been the world chess champion for almost 12 years. Today, he’ll play the first of six games against Deep Blue, a new supercomputer built by experts from IBM. Around the world, millions of people, both chess fans and others, follow the livestreamed action which features commentary by co-author Ashley, the first African American Grandmaster. Ashley also appears in the book in a framing narrative set in a present-day Brooklyn park. In these interstitial scenes, he explains the history of chess and contextualizes Kasparov’s historic match to eager young chess players. Characters from both 1997 and today contemplate the fearsome power of technology, and the book compares anxiety around Deep Blue to modern concerns about AI. While Kasparov wants “to be the man who will save our pride. Human pride,” the Deep Blue team of Joel Benjamin, Murray Campbell, and Feng-Hsiung Hsu is eager for the computer to triumph; they feel as if everyone is against them except their “fellow computer nerds.” The high stakes of the chess match come through not only in Sheinkin and Ashley’s tight text and dramatic dialogue but also in the full-color illustrations. Pham creates suspense by changing the amount of time that passes between frames, exaggerating pauses between chess moves, and varying the focus of the panels.
A timely, edge-of-your-seat read that’s equally riveting for chess players and nonplayers alike. (authors’ notes) (Graphic nonfiction. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250334770
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
Wordplay and wry wit put extra fun into a trove of fundamental knowledge.
With an amped-up sense of wonder, the Science Guy surveys the natural universe.
Starting from first principles like the scientific method, Nye and his co-author marvel at the “Amazing Machine” that is the human body then go on to talk up animals, plants, evolution, physics and chemistry, the quantum realm, geophysics, and climate change. They next venture out into the solar system and beyond. Along with tallying select aspects and discoveries in each chapter, the authors gather up “Massively Important” central concepts, send shoutouts to underrecognized women scientists like oceanographer Marie Tharp, and slip in directions for homespun experiments and demonstrations. They also challenge readers to ponder still-unsolved scientific posers and intersperse rousing quotes from working scientists about how exciting and wide open their respective fields are. If a few of those fields, like the fungal kingdom, get short shrift (one spare paragraph notwithstanding), readers are urged often enough to go look things up for themselves to kindle a compensatory habit. Aside from posed photos of Nye and a few more of children (mostly presenting as White) doing science-y things, the full-color graphic and photographic images not only reflect the overall “get this!” tone but consistently enrich the flow of facts and reflections. “Our universe is a strange and surprising place,” Nye writes. “Stay curious.” Words to live by.
Wordplay and wry wit put extra fun into a trove of fundamental knowledge. (contributors, art credits, selected bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 11-15)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4676-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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