Stimulating glimpses of local solutions to widespread and increasingly pressing environmental issues.
With rare verve, a trained architect surveys some of the innovative and ingenious ways that 13 cities worldwide are making themselves greener and coping with changing climate conditions.
As noteworthy for the lush, lively illustrations as for the initiatives and projects that they depict, this overview offers a range of successes both large and small that are bound to get would-be urban designers’ creative juices flowing. The book opens with views of gardens planted on the tops of buses and bus stops and on tall buildings in Singapore and closes with a look at skyscrapers made of laminated timber going up in Vancouver. In between, Tentler-Krylov highlights a floating park made from recycled litter in Rotterdam, huge gates that rise up in the lagoon of Venice to minimize storm flooding, and a park landscaped to divert floodwaters in Bangkok away from streets and into a retention pond to draw on in the dry season. Curious readers will appreciate the frequent smaller inset pictures, which supplement the lucid verbal descriptions with diagrams of internal mechanisms or other hidden details. Nor does Tentler-Krylov neglect the human element, adding to nearly every scene colorfully dressed, multiracial crowds of pedestrians or crews of busy workers.
Stimulating glimpses of local solutions to widespread and increasingly pressing environmental issues. (author’s note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781419756696
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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