Per the series promise, a slightly “unhinged” celebration of daring diving developments.
A rhyming account of the invention of the bathysphere.
Fascinated by the ocean depths, Will Beebe dives in to invent a way to explore beyond the shallow depths that diving equipment of the 1920s allows. His designs and “silly proposals and doodles” from other inventors go “straight to the trashcan,” however, until Otis Barton gets involved. Barton, an engineer, “[has] his heart set on—PLOP!—disappearing / Beneath the sea’s surface and breaking all records / For deepness” and knows that Beebe’s “soda-can shape” will crumple under deepwater pressure. Beebe adopts Barton’s stronger, spherical design, and, luckily, Barton’s family is rich enough to fund its construction. Despite personality clashes, minor design failures, seasickness, and the Great Depression, Beebe and Barton create a two-person vessel that descends almost a half mile. Today, the original bathysphere is displayed outside the New York (City) Aquarium. Next to Barb Rosenstock’s prose account in Otis & Will Discover the Deep (illustrated by Katherine Roy, 2018), Enik’s playfully rhyming couplets feel lightweight, but the backmatter, which includes the bathysphere’s schematic, a timeline of human diving progress, and a biography of Gloria Hollister (the first mate and recorder on deck), provides some heft. Cartoon illustrations portray Beebe, Barton, and Hollister as white adults.
Per the series promise, a slightly “unhinged” celebration of daring diving developments. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7643-5793-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Schiffer
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments.
The junior senator from California introduces family and friends as everyday superheroes.
The endpapers are covered with cascades of, mostly, early childhood snapshots (“This is me contemplating the future”—caregivers of toddlers will recognize that abstracted look). In between, Harris introduces heroes in her life who have shaped her character: her mom and dad, whose superpowers were, respectively, to make her feel special and brave; an older neighbor known for her kindness; grandparents in India and Jamaica who “[stood] up for what’s right” (albeit in unspecified ways); other relatives and a teacher who opened her awareness to a wider world; and finally iconic figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley who “protected people by using the power of words and ideas” and whose examples inspired her to become a lawyer. “Heroes are…YOU!” she concludes, closing with a bulleted Hero Code and a timeline of her legal and political career that ends with her 2017 swearing-in as senator. In group scenes, some of the figures in the bright, simplistic digital illustrations have Asian features, some are in wheelchairs, nearly all are people of color. Almost all are smiling or grinning. Roe provides everyone identified as a role model with a cape and poses the author, who is seen at different ages wearing an identifying heart pin or decoration, next to each.
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984837-49-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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