With plenty of gory details, Jurmain recounts the six months in 1900 when Dr. Walter Reed and his team of doctors in Cuba determined that mosquitoes carry yellow fever. Dangerous experiments helped them narrow their focus and eliminate other theories about the disease’s origin, but at the cost of the one young doctor’s death. Even reluctant readers will respond to the gruesome descriptions of the disease and of brave volunteers who wore blood-and-vomit–covered clothing in 100-degree heat to see if yellow fever could be passed on through cloth (it can’t). Quotations from the doctors’ letters and later accounts by other participants gives the story an immediacy heightened by conversational writing full of questions and cliffhangers. Almost every double-page spread features a black-and-white photograph of the players, their equipment or artifacts, with little photos of mosquitoes scattered throughout. Match this with Fever, 1793 (2000), by Laurie Halse Anderson, and An American Plague (2003), by Jim Murphy, both recommended as “Further Reading,” to complete this powerful exploration of a disease that killed 100,000 U.S. citizens in the 1800s. (appendix, glossary, endnotes, bibliography, index [not seen]) (Nonfiction. 12 & up)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-618-96581-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The diet revolution, formally reserved for adolescents and adults, takes front and center stage in a picture book that purports to be a lesson in self-esteem. When faced with an acting audition in a local play, would-be actress Hillary the cat, formerly happy with herself, looks in the mirror and finds she is too round. Goaded on by her sister, slim Felice the diet queen, Hillary suddenly adopts the strict regimen of eating dry toast, watery soup, and a bowl of lettuce while working out at all hours on the stairstepper. The motives overtake story in a well-meaning but heavy-handed message when Hillary sees the much-admired actress/singer Nina Clophoofer, who is not only round, but happy and comfortable with herself. These cartoon creatures from Caple resemble a pleasant cross between Aliki’s characters and Nancy Carlson’s, but the story is too self-conscious and unintentionally inspiring: Children who have no weight problem and who have never considered the possibility of being either too large or too small may suddenly be checking their mirrors. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: March 2, 1999
ISBN: 1-57505-261-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
A well-intentioned description of life before birth. The illustrations make use of photographs (including ultrasound) and artist’s drawings, often in the same image, and these are well used to clarify the text. How babies grow and develop inside the womb is both described and illustrated, and while the tone is one of forced cheer, the information is sound. Also offered are quite silly exercises for children to experience what life in the womb might be like, such as listening to a dishwasher to experience the sounds a baby hears inside its mother’s body, or being held under a towel or blanket by an adult and wiggling about. The getting-together of sperm and egg is lightly passed over, as is the actual process of birth. But children may be mesmerized by the drawings of the growing child inside the mother, and what activities predate their birth dates. Not an essential purchase, but adequate as an addition to the collection. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-894379-01-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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