Repeating the inspired formula of Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women (2000), Sweet’s exuberant collages add both information and visual energy to lively profiles of more than a dozen female adults or children who have Found Something Significant. Along with such usual suspects as Mary Anning (dinosaur fossils) and Jane Goodall (tool-using chimpanzees), Thimmesh includes less-familiar figures, conducting personal interviews with each of her living subjects. Among them are astronomer Vera Rubin, whose “dark matter” theory is revolutionizing our ideas about the universe; archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat, who identified a surprising precursor to writing in ancient Middle Eastern sites, and Anna Sofaer, who identified among Chaco Canyon petroglyphs a complex Anasazi calendar. Not everyone here is a trained scientist, or for that matter, even out of junior high. The last section is given over to six students with inventive science projects, from a low-tech method of turning puddles into safe drinking water, to proof that vegetables grown in city lots can contain dangerous levels of lead. Though, oddly, only the living are listed in the table of contents, and an account of June Moxon’s trip across the US in a foot-powered kinetic sculpture doesn’t really fit the premise, Thimmesh makes a convincing case for the idea that the thrill of discovery is a feeling anyone can have. She closes with an array of resources to help young readers get off the stick. (timeline, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 25, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-07698-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
A world-class charmer, Clements (The Janitor’s Boy, 2000, etc.) woos aspiring young authors—as well as grown up publishers, editors, agents, parents, teachers, and even reviewers—with this tongue-in-cheek tale of a 12-year-old novelist’s triumphant debut. Sparked by a chance comment of her mother’s, a harried assistant editor for a (surely fictional) children’s imprint, Natalie draws on deep reserves of feeling and writing talent to create a moving story about a troubled schoolgirl and her father. First, it moves her pushy friend Zoe, who decides that it has to be published; then it moves a timorous, second-year English teacher into helping Zoe set up a virtual literary agency; then, submitted pseudonymously, it moves Natalie’s unsuspecting mother into peddling it to her waspish editor-in-chief. Depicting the world of children’s publishing as a delicious mix of idealism and office politics, Clements squires the manuscript past slush pile and contract, the editing process, and initial buzz (“The Cheater grabs hold of your heart and never lets go,” gushes Kirkus). Finally, in a tearful, joyous scene—carefully staged by Zoe, who turns out to be perfect agent material: cunning, loyal, devious, manipulative, utterly shameless—at the publication party, Natalie’s identity is revealed as news cameras roll. Selznick’s gnomic, realistic portraits at once reflect the tale’s droll undertone and deftly capture each character’s distinct personality. Terrific for flourishing school writing projects, this is practical as well as poignant. Indeed, it “grabs hold of yourheart and never lets go.” (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-82594-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
“Hear, and listen well, my friends, and I will tell you a tale that has been told for a thousand years and more.” It’s not exactly a rarely told tale, either, though this complete rendition is distinguished by both handsome packaging and a prose narrative that artfully mixes alliterative language reminiscent of the original, with currently topical references to, for instance, Grendel’s “endless terror raids,” and the “holocaust at Heorot.” Along with being printed on heavy stock and surrounded by braided borders, the text is paired to colorful scenes featuring a small human warrior squaring off with a succession of grimacing but not very frightening monsters in battles marked by but a few discreet splashes of blood. Morpurgo puts his finger on the story’s enduring appeal—“we still fear the evil that stalks out there in the darkness . . . ”—but offers a version unlikely to trouble the sleep of more sensitive readers or listeners. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3206-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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