A dozen young teens undergo simulated astronaut training in this fascinating photo journal that’s packed with information on NASA space flights, training equipment, and kid comments about the rigor and excitement of preparing for space travel. Students experience extreme force in the Space Shot, try walking in reduced gravity using the Gravity Chair, and launch their own shuttle, Endeavour, from a simulated Mission Control Station. They develop problem-solving skills working with Legos, and develop teamwork, attempting to construct a cube of PCB pipes underwater. Each page has full-color photographs of the teens using the specialized training equipment and exploring real space modules. There are Amazing Space Facts side boxes, and photographs from NASA astronauts on space missions. Quotes from the participants enliven the text, and the author also imparts odd and interesting facts about how real astronauts manage eating, sleeping, showering, keeping clean, keeping cool, and urinating in space. Written with abundant good humor, this is a really attractive addition to the series with lots of kid appeal. (glossary, bibliography, acknowledgments for sources, no index) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83044-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In an entry in the Turning Point Inventions series, Wallace invites readers to consider the drawbacks of earlier forms of artificial daylight, from wooden torches to arc lamps, then retraces Thomas Edison’s intense, deliberate search for a practical electric light. Edison, inspired by a book of science experiments to become an inventor, combined a searching intellect with bulldog stubbornness, and can be credited not just with the light bulb itself, but also with the far more difficult accomplishment of engineering public acceptance of electricity in order to create a market for his invention. As much a readable character portrait as it is an account of the origin of a now-ubiquitous widget, Wallace’s book is generously illustrated with contemporary black- and-white and full-color photographs and views, and capped by a fold-out look at a lightbulb’s parts and assembly. Illuminating, of course. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 9-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82816-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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