An adventure that might help protect an ecosystem.
Experienced nature chroniclers visit a tiny Amazon town that celebrates its tropical fish trade.
In the company of Scott Dowd, senior aquarist from Boston’s New England Aquarium, and others on the Project Piaba team, Montgomery and photographer Ellenbogen travel up an Amazon tributary, the Rio Negro, to see tiny fish in their native habitat. During the dry season, discus, cardinal tetras, and other ornamental species, locally classed as piaba, are collected for sale to aquarists around the world. Modernizing this fish trade might preserve a way of life in tiny Amazon towns and the surrounding rain forest as well. In Barcelos, the travelers observe an annual celebration with elaborate costumes, dancing, and floats displayed by contesting teams. Aboard their boat, they watch veterinarians from abroad teaching Brazilian professionals techniques for the collection and preservation of healthy fish that the Brazilians, in turn, can pass on to the locals. And even farther upriver, they visit a tiny community of piabeiros, fish gatherers. Their trip is reported smoothly and illustrated with well-chosen photographs of local fishermen and women, scientists, dancers, and the fish themselves, often in the dark, tannin-stained waters of the Rio Negro. Like other titles in this series, chapters are separated by short, interesting side stories.
An adventure that might help protect an ecosystem. (map, selected bibliography, Web resources, acknowledgements, index) (Nonfiction. 10-15)Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-35299-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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