The mystery of the pyramids is solved before our eyes as Macaulay's minutely detailed free-hand sketches and cross-section diagrams follow the raising of layer after layer of stone blocks. Beginning with the first plans drawn for the pyramid—which will be only ten feet shorter and not unlike Khufu's at Giza—we see how a priest determines true north at the building site, how water-filled trenches function as a giant level, how the roof of the inner chamber is constructed by filling the room with rubble and then digging it out once the ceiling is in place. . . . And since there's still some controversy over the earth ramps used to lift stones to the pyramid's higher level, Macaulay even builds a mini-pyramid next door to demonstrate a second kind of ramp design. The principles at work here are simpler than those used to build Cathedral and City, but the solutions are just as fascinating. And of course Macaulay's drawings are enough to make the most ambitious doodler turn green with envy.
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1975
ISBN: 0395321212
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world.
Sent to stay with octogenarian relatives for the summer, 14-year-old Mike ends up coordinating a community drive to raise $40,000 for the adoption of a Romanian orphan. He’ll never be his dad's kind of engineer, but he learns he’s great at human engineering.
Mike’s math learning disability is matched by his widower father's lack of social competence; the Giant Genius can’t even reliably remember his son’s name. Like many of the folks the boy comes to know in Do Over, Penn.—his great-uncle Poppy silent in his chair, the multiply pierced-and-tattooed Gladys from the bank and “a homeless guy” who calls himself Past—Mike feels like a failure. But in spite of his own lack of confidence, he provides the kick start they need to cope with their losses and contribute to the campaign. Using the Internet (especially YouTube), Mike makes use of town talents and his own webpage design skills and entrepreneurial imagination. Math-definition chapter headings (Compatible Numbers, Zero Property, Tessellations) turn out to apply well to human actions in this well-paced, first-person narrative. Erskine described Asperger’s syndrome from the inside in Mockingbird (2010). Here, it’s a likely cause for the rift between father and son touchingly mended at the novel's cinematic conclusion.
A satisfying story of family, friendship and small-town cooperation in a 21st-century world. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25505-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
Ephemeral—unlike the art here (some of it, at least) and those fondly remembered little books.
Chicken soup for fans of Golden Books, from the line’s editorial director.
Reasoning that hard times have come to America (“The chickens have come home to roost, and their names are Debt, Depression, and Diabetes”), Muldrow offers this book as palliative. She gathers single illustrations from 61 Little Golden Books and adds pithy captions as anodynes, such as “Don’t panic…” (beneath Tibor Gergely’s 1948 image of a dismayed child holding detached braids) or “Have some pancakes” (Richard Scarry, 1949). Though some of her advice has a modern inflection (“Don’t forget your antioxidants!”), the pictures all come from titles published between 1942 and 1964 and so, despite the great diversity of artistic styles, have a quaint period look. Not to mention quaint period values, from views of apron-wearing housewives and pipe-smoking men (or bears) to, with but two exceptions, an all-white cast of humans. Furthermore, despite the title’s implication, the exhortations don’t always reflect the original story’s lesson or theme; rather than “Make a budget—and stick to it!” the lad in Miriam Young’s 5 Pennies To Spend (illustrated by Corinne Malvern, 1955) actually used his hoard to help others in need.
Ephemeral—unlike the art here (some of it, at least) and those fondly remembered little books. (Picture book. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-97761-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Golden Books/Random
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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