These brief glimpses will whet the appetites of wannabe wanderers of all ages.
A husband-and-wife team, seasoned travelers, artists, and children’s-book creators, offer readers a selection of highlights from 40 years of careful observation of the natural and human worlds in places near and far.
Since the publication of Gorilla Walk in 1999, the Lewins have produced numerous titles reflecting specific adventures, but this is the first joint compilation of their travel experiences. Working continent by continent and beginning with their first safari to the Serengeti, they recount their adventures as if they were conversing with readers; sometimes one talks, sometimes the other. Some anecdotes are humorous and others sobering, especially as they note the effects of 30 years of civil war in Uganda or contrast the experience of a sloth bear in the wild with that of a captive dancing on the street near Delhi. There are scary encounters with lions, elephants, snakes, leeches, and a sharp-billed macaw—not to mention soldiers. There are curious foods—mopani worms and mushrooms the size of pizzas. They travel by horse cart and reindeer sledge and atop an elephant. They admire French bullfighters and Mongolian wrestlers and horses everywhere. They marvel, too, at spectacles close to home: a cattle roundup in Nevada, horseshoe crabs massed on the Delaware shore.
These brief glimpses will whet the appetites of wannabe wanderers of all ages. (Nonfiction. 8 & up)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59643-616-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative.
This junior edition of Stewart’s lurid 2011 portrait gallery of the same name (though much less gleeful subtitle) loses none of its capacity for leaving readers squicked-out.
The author drops a few entries, notably the one on insect sexual practices, and rearranges toned-down versions of the rest into roughly topical sections. Beginning with the same cogent observation—“We are seriously outnumbered”—she follows general practice in thrillers of this ilk by defining “bug” broadly enough to include all-too-detailed descriptions of the life cycles and revolting or deadly effects of scorpions and spiders, ticks, lice, and, in a chapter evocatively titled “The Enemy Within,” such internal guests as guinea worms and tapeworms. Mosquitoes, bedbugs, the ubiquitous “Filth Fly,” and like usual suspects mingle with more-exotic threats, from the tongue-eating louse and a “yak-killer hornet” (just imagine) to the aggressive screw-worm fly that, in one cited case, flew up a man’s nose and laid hundreds of eggs…that…hatched. Morrow-Cribbs’ close-up full-color drawings don’t offer the visceral thrills of the photos in, for instance, Rebecca L. Johnson’s Zombie Makers (2012) but are accurate and finely detailed enough to please even the fussiest young entomologists.
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative. (index, glossary, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61620-755-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
“In 1875 there were perhaps fifty million of them. Just twenty-five years later nearly every one of them was gone.” The author of many nonfiction books for young people (Bridges; Truck; Giants of the Highways, etc.) tells the story of the American bison, from prehistory, when Bison latifrons walked North America along with the dinosaurs, to the recent past when the Sioux and other plains Indians hunted the familiar bison. Robbins uses historic photographs, etchings, and paintings to show their sad history. To the Native Americans of the plains, the buffalo was central to their way of life. Arriving Europeans, however, hunted for sport, slaughtering thousands for their hides, or to clear the land for the railroad, or farmers. One telling photo shows a man atop a mountain of buffalo skulls. At the very last moment, enough individuals “came to their senses,” and worked to protect the remaining few. Thanks to their efforts, this animal is no longer endangered, but the author sounds a somber note as he concludes: “the millions are gone, and they will never come back.” A familiar story, well-told, and enhanced by the many well-chosen period photographs. (photo credits) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83025-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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