An accessible and thoroughly engaging biography of the much-profiled scientist, this easy-to-follow narrative is enriched by striking illustrations and excerpts from Darwin’s own writings. McGinty lays out the major events in Darwin’s life clearly and both enhances readers’ understanding and piques their interest by choosing the accompanying quotations carefully. Her writing is smooth and conversational, and while she compresses a large amount of information into only a few pages, readers never feel rushed or confused. In addition to describing his famous voyage on the Beagle, the author focuses on Darwin’s long struggle to reconcile his discoveries with religious teachings, giving readers a better understanding not only of what Darwin posited but also the impact it had on his world—and ours. Azarian’s woodcuts, hand-tinted with watercolors, showcase the wonders Darwin saw on his voyage beautifully and also illuminate the everyday environment of home and family. Presenting the quotations in script on facsimile paper fragments to evoke the style of the time adds to the overall appeal. Exquisite and enlightening. (author’s, source notes) (Biography. 7-10)
Pub Date: April 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-618-99531-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
Spinning lively invented details around skimpy historical records, Taylor profiles the 19th-century chef credited with inventing the potato chip. Crum, thought to be of mixed Native-American and African-American ancestry, was a lover of the outdoors, who turned cooking skills learned from a French hunter into a kitchen job at an upscale resort in New York state. As the story goes, he fried up the first batch of chips in a fit of pique after a diner complained that his French fries were cut too thickly. Morrison’s schoolroom, kitchen and restaurant scenes seem a little more integrated than would have been likely in the 1850s, but his sinuous figures slide through them with exaggerated elegance, adding a theatrical energy as delicious as the snack food they celebrate. The author leaves Crum presiding over a restaurant (also integrated) of his own, closes with a note separating fact from fiction and also lists her sources. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58430-255-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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