“The great state of Texas is waiting for you. / Come travel the land and meet people, too. / Then pick a direction—north, south, east, or west— / and you can decide which parts you like best.” So begins this rhyming introduction to 16 Texan sites and cities, from Amarillo (“There are plenty of cattle, but few armadillo”) to Big Bend National Park. Laudatory and cliché-riddled as a promotional brochure, the short stanzas (one per spread) promise visitors cowboys and cattle, grapefruit and roses in faltering, sing-song rhymes: “Due west in the desert is grand old El Paso, / where tumbleweeds whirl through as swift as a lasso.” The limited text often tries to convey too much, too perkily, and just ends up baffling. (The eight-page appendix fleshes out each entry, if readers persevere.) Spearing’s full-bleed colored-pencil illustrations on textured paper sometimes have a static, paint-by-number look, especially the people. Sweeping rural and urban landscapes contrast with boxed insets highlighting Texas icons from oil wells to a portrait of Sam Houston. A bumpy ride through the Lone Star State. (Informational picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-57091-725-7
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The author of Cod’s Tale (2001) again demonstrates a dab hand at recasting his adult work for a younger audience. Here the topic is salt, “the only rock eaten by human beings,” and, as he engrossingly demonstrates, “the object of wars and revolutions” throughout recorded history and before. Between his opening disquisition on its chemical composition and a closing timeline, he explores salt’s sources and methods of extraction, its worldwide economic influences from prehistoric domestication of animals to Gandhi’s Salt March, its many uses as a preservative and industrial product, its culinary and even, as the source for words like “salary” and “salad,” its linguistic history. Along with lucid maps and diagrams, Schindler supplies detailed, sometimes fanciful scenes to go along, finishing with a view of young folk chowing down on orders of French fries as ghostly figures from history look on. Some of Kurlansky’s claims are exaggerated (the Erie and other canals were built to transport more than just salt, for instance), and there are no leads to further resources, but this salutary (in more ways than one) micro-history will have young readers lifting their shakers in tribute. (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-23998-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
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