A useful if uncomplicated way of teaching “that we can all make a real difference when we choose to give back.” (sources)...
Certainly the world of public libraries would be poorer without the substantial contribution of Andrew Carnegie.
This picture-book biography outlines the rags-to-riches story of the Scottish immigrant’s journey as a child to the United States and his rapid succession through jobs to one with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. With money earned from his managerial role, he began the shrewd investing in railway, oil, iron, and steel companies that led to his extreme wealth. He never forgot the pleasure he got from books borrowed as a young man from Col. Anderson’s private library in Pittsburgh. This gentleman allowed “young workers” access every Saturday. The accompanying illustration shows young Andrew ascending a ladder up a vast wall of books that occupies the entire page. When Carnegie grew rich, he “used his own money to build public libraries so others could have the same opportunity.” Carnegie’s story is told in methodical, plain fashion, with the more controversial aspects of his career as a union-busting robber baron confined to a paragraph in backmatter. Illustrations feature a flattened, naïve style in a limited palette dependent on blues and browns, appropriate to the 19th-century period. An unlabeled world map highlights the far-flung locations of Carnegie libraries.
A useful if uncomplicated way of teaching “that we can all make a real difference when we choose to give back.” (sources) (Picture book/biography. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77147-267-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit.
The bubble-helmeted feline explains what rockets do and the role they have played in sending people (and animals) into space.
Addressing a somewhat younger audience than in previous outings (Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, 2013, etc.), Astro Cat dispenses with all but a light shower of “factoroids” to describe how rockets work. A highly selective “History of Space Travel” follows—beginning with a crew of fruit flies sent aloft in 1947, later the dog Laika (her dismal fate left unmentioned), and the human Yuri Gagarin. Then it’s on to Apollo 11 in 1969; the space shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Challenger (the fates of the latter two likewise elided); the promise of NASA’s next-gen Orion and the Space Launch System; and finally vague closing references to other rockets in the works for local tourism and, eventually, interstellar travel. In the illustrations the spacesuited professor, joined by a mouse and cat in similar dress, do little except float in space and point at things. Still, the art has a stylish retro look, and portraits of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford diversify an otherwise all-white, all-male astronaut corps posing heroically or riding blocky, geometric spacecraft across starry reaches.
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911171-55-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book....
From funeral clown to cheese sculptor, a tally of atypical trades.
This free-wheeling survey, framed as a visit to “The Great Hall of Jobs,” is designed to shake readers loose from simplistic notions of the world of work. Labarre opens with a generic sculpture gallery of, as she puts it, “The Classics”—doctor, dancer, farmer, athlete, chef, and the like—but quickly moves on, arranging busy cartoon figures by the dozen in kaleidoscopic arrays, with pithy captions describing each occupation. As changes of pace she also tucks in occasional challenges to match select workers (Las Vegas wedding minister, “ethical” hacker, motion-capture actor) with their distinctive tools or outfits. The actual chances of becoming, say, the queen’s warden of the swans or a professional mattress jumper, not to mention the nitty-gritty of physical or academic qualifications, income levels, and career paths, are left largely unspecified…but along with noting that new jobs are being invented all the time (as, in the illustration, museum workers wheel in a “vlogger” statue), the author closes with the perennial insight that it’s essential to love what you do and the millennial one that there’s nothing wrong with repeatedly switching horses midstream. The many adult figures and the gaggle of children (one in a wheelchair) visiting the “Hall” are diverse of feature, sex, and skin color.
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1219-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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