For precocious children fascinated by science.
When Fahama is kidnapped, she must figure out how to stop an evil brain from harvesting her own.
Fahama, a brown-skinned hijabi, agrees to help her little sister, Nour, sell her Woodland Adventure cookies door to door, but at the first house she approaches, she falls through a trap door in the porch. A butler who looks like Frankenstein’s monster assists Dr. Cerebrum, a brain encased in glass with robotic arms and legs, who plans to remove Fahama’s brain for science. When he finishes explaining his aim, Fahama asks more questions to keep him talking instead of sawing. He covers ancient cultures’ beliefs about the brain and evolution, but things get complicated quickly with the structure of different kinds of cells, how neurons work, oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells. He explains the nervous system in a fairly straightforward way, offers charts to locate the areas of the brain that control certain functions, and discusses reflexes, memory, and senses in detail. Meanwhile, Nour figures out that her sister has been kidnapped and hatches a plan to save her. The paneled illustrations serve the material best when offering examples; the combination of information overload and visual crowding on the page makes the material explored seem even more intimidating than it already is. With complex sentences, no pronunciation guides, and not much story to carry readers forward, this book asks a lot of young readers.
For precocious children fascinated by science. (glossary) (Graphic nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62672-801-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Readers who want to know when their jet packs and food tablets will be coming will find no answers in this mishmash of...
A Belgian import attempts prognostication.
Schutten opens and closes with the dead-cinch prediction that readers in 2030 will laugh at his views on where household tech, sustainable land and water use, medicine and robotics are heading in the near future. In between, he delivers debatable prophecies that microwave ovens will be superseded by unspecified new devices, that computer games will replace most toys and like airy claims. These are embedded in equally superficial surveys of the pros and cons of fossil and alternative energy sources, as well as cautionary looks at environmentally damaging agricultural and lifestyle practices that are in at least the early stages of being addressed. Conversely, he is blindly optimistic about the wonders of “superfoods,” carrying surveillance chips in our bodies and supersmart robots managing our lives. Uncaptioned photos and graphics add lots of color but little content. A closing section of provocative questions, plus endnotes citing news stories, blog posts and other sources of more detailed information, may give would-be futurologists some reward for slogging their ways through.
Readers who want to know when their jet packs and food tablets will be coming will find no answers in this mishmash of eco-sermons and vague allusions to cutting-edge technology. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58270-474-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beyond Words/Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Best for casual browsing; for systematic, reliable information, look elsewhere.
A broad overview of the biosphere, with hundreds of stylish plant and animal portraits.
Kitted out with a foldout poster jacket, multiple ribbons, and a color-coded system of margin tabs, this oversized album collects 67 topical “charts” presenting, in no apparent order, surveys of world habitats and ocean zones; introductions to taxonomy and food webs; arrays of bird beaks, feet, eggs, nests, and feathers; group portraits of related organisms and closer looks at selected single ones. Animals are the main focus, though other kingdoms draw at least some notice. Davey’s digital illustrations look like cut-paper collages—flat of surface and perspective, composed of multiple elements of diverse hue and pattern. The figures are generally recognizable and capable of putting on a grand show, as with one display of birds of paradise and another of tropical reef denizens. The lighting, though, is murky throughout, sometimes to the extent that physical details are obscured. Similarly, captions and blocks of explanatory text, which are all in minuscule type, are hard to see against the darker backgrounds. More problematically, readers will be left in the dark by unamplified claims that inorganic things are “not made of cells but of tiny things called particles,” and “some fish are more closely related to other vertebrates than they are to other fish.”
Best for casual browsing; for systematic, reliable information, look elsewhere. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84780-782-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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