Solid scientific browsing.
Each of 18 chapters offers support for titular sentences that seemingly contradict each other, as in “Earth Is Big” versus “Earth Is Small."
The large format—roughly 12 inches high by 20 inches wide when open—is necessary to pull off the curating. An introduction discusses exploring “the planet (and a lot of other things) through measurement and comparison.” Each chapter has been carefully arranged over one double-page spread. Bands of contrasting (if drab) colors and different type sizes and weights help keep attention; abundant, sometimes-droll posterlike illustrations are complementary but can feel overwhelming. The book has a decidedly retro feel, but art pays attention to racial presentation, and text includes climate change, mass extinctions, and a 2012 meteorite strike. Using contrasts to organize facts about the planet is a good idea in a time when attention is scarce. Teachers and parents who enjoyed browsing through the How and Why series of yore will find this a comfortable, updated replacement. The text valiantly serves up accessible explanations of terminology in virtually every field of science even as it also shows comparisons. For example, before a page comparing heavy metals, there are sidebars about the difference between mass and weight and about calculating density. One interesting chapter compares spherical and near-spherical objects living, nonliving, and human-made—including Earth, of course. Cool, kid-friendly fact: Soap bubbles become perfect spheres because of surface tension.
Solid scientific browsing. (contents, glossary, conversion table, index, source notes) (Nonfiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-912920-34-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: What on Earth!
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
“Humans are lucky to have rodents,” Munro argues…and makes her case with equal warmth to hearts and minds.
Twenty-one representatives of the largest mammalian order pose in this fetching portrait gallery.
Each one depicted, all or in part, at actual size, the rodentine array begins with a pocket-watch–size African pygmy jerboa and concludes with the largest member of the clan, the “sweet-looking capybara.” In between, specimens climb the scale past chipmunks and northern flying squirrels to a Norway rat, porcupine, and groundhog. Despite a few outliers such as the naked mole rat and a rather aggressive-looking beaver, Munro’s animals—particularly her impossibly cute guinea pig—strongly exude shaggy, button-eyed appeal. Her subjects may come across as eye candy, but they are drawn with naturalistic exactitude, and in her accompanying descriptive comments, she often relates certain visible features to distinctive habitats and behaviors. She also has a terrific feel for the memorable fact: naked mole rats run as quickly backward in their tunnels as forward; African giant pouched rats have been trained to sniff out mines; the house mouse “is a romantic. A male mouse will sing squeaky love songs to his girlfriend” (that are, fortunately or otherwise, too high for humans to hear). Closing summaries will serve budding naturalists in need of further specifics about sizes, diets, geographical ranges, and the like.
“Humans are lucky to have rodents,” Munro argues…and makes her case with equal warmth to hearts and minds. (websites, index) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3860-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An ill-conceived exercise in anthropomorphism.
Over 100 wild animals describe their jobs in human terms.
As a useful premise or even a viable conceit, this is an abject failure as nonfiction. Giving all 112 creatures introduced here different occupations, Hunt misleads with artificial cognates: the hyena tells readers: “I am a comedian”; the porcupine announces: “I am an acupuncturist.” One- or two-sentence explanatory notes often muddy the waters further: “I laugh hysterically to show how important I am in the group,” the hyena says. Moreover, an opening assertion that in nature animals help “their neighbors to have better lives,” coupled with a scarcity of specific references thereafter to predators and prey, is just disingenuous…as is a claim later on that indigenous species in the Hawaiian Islands and those that were introduced more recently, such as the Indian mongoose (shown here robbing a bird’s nest), “work side by side.” The collectively produced cartoon illustrations (“Muti” is a studio) feature both individual portraits and ensemble views of each animal, generally smiling, in one of 14 relatively specific habitats, from the “Kenyan savanna in Africa” to a Washington state backyard (where honeybees are inaccurately housed in a paper-wasps’ nest).
An ill-conceived exercise in anthropomorphism. (index) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-84780-972-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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