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GREEK MYTHS AND MAZES

Name: GREEK MYTHS AND MAZES
Author: Jan Bajtlik
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0964-8

by Jan Bajtlik ; illustrated by Jan Bajtlik ; translated by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019

Tangled tales and knotty challenges for veteran maze runners.

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Unusual journeys await young explorers in an introduction to select ancient Greek myths, legends, monsters, and sites that have been mapped onto a series of mazes.

Working on large folio spreads, Bajtlik concocts massive tangles of routes and passageways for viewers to tackle: There’s the Minotaur’s labyrinth, of course, but also intricate visual plotlines for the “Twelve Labors of Heracles,” the voyage of the Argo, the Trojan War, Odysseus’ journey home, and how Oedipus came to marry his mother. There are fanciful scenes too, such as a cross-section of fiery Mount Etna showing the forge of Hephaestus and a sea battle between Achaeans and Trojans. Mazes are present but peripheral in other scenes, such as an aerial view of the Acropolis, a “Bestiary” of 35 mythical creatures, and an overview of the ancient Olympics with 14 events identified. Tiny figures, nearly all light skinned and mostly in armor or filmy dress but occasionally naked, pose dramatically as if drawn directly from old murals and ceramics. Most bear identifying names or labels. Readers in search of less arduous versions can turn to the back, past a partial family tree of gods and heroes, to sanitized prose summaries and descriptions that (unlike the sometimes-graphic mazes) downplay the sex and violence. These summaries mention no sources but do include relevant expressions still in use, such as “Achilles’ heel” and “siren song.”

Tangled tales and knotty challenges for veteran maze runners. (Novelty. 7-10)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5362-0964-8

Page Count: 80

Publisher: Candlewick Studio

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
OUR CAR
by J.M. Brum ; illustrated by Jan Bajtlik

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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

From the All About America series

by Hilarie N. Staton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2012

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Shot through with vague generalities and paired to a mix of equally generic period images and static new art, this overview remorselessly sucks all the juice from its topic.

This survey of the growth of industries in this country from the Colonial period to the post–World War II era is written in the driest of textbook-ese: “Factories needed good transportation so that materials could reach them and so that materials could reach buyers”; “The metal iron is obtained by heating iron ore”; “In 1860, the North said that free men, not slaves, should do the work.” This text is supplemented by a jumble of narrative-overview blocks, boxed side observations and terse captions on each thematic spread. The design is packed with overlapping, misleadingly seamless and rarely differentiated mixes of small, heavily trimmed contemporary prints or (later) photos and drab reconstructions of workshop or factory scenes, along with pictures of significant inventions and technological innovations (which are, in several cases, reduced to background design elements). The single, tiny map has no identifying labels. Other new entries in the All About America series deal similarly with Explorers, Trappers, and Pioneers, A Nation of Immigrants and Stagecoaches and Railroads. Utilitarian, at best—but more likely to dim reader interest than kindle it. (index, timeline, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 8-10)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-7534-6670-4

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Kingfisher

Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY

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WILLA

THE STORY OF WILLA CATHER, AN AMERICAN WRITER

by Amy Ehrlich illustrated by Wendell Minor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2016

A simplistic treatment for an audience likely unfamiliar with its subject.

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Ehrlich renders an admiring portrait of Cather, focusing on the relationship between her writing and the places she lived and visited.

Willa and family followed her grandparents from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883. Willa was lonely, but she had a pony and freedom to roam. When her father traded farming for real estate, the family moved to Red Cloud. She read keenly, enjoying adult friends, who "were more interesting than children and...talked to Willa in a serious and cultured way." During her freshman year at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, an essay’s publication changed Willa's path from doctor to writer. Cather worked at magazines in Pittsburgh and New York. The writer Sarah Orne Jewett urged her to focus on her own writing. Journeys to Europe, the American Southwest, back to Nebraska and Virginia—all resonated in her accomplished fiction. Ehrlich writes with little inflection, sometimes adopting Cather's viewpoint. The Civil War and slavery are briefly treated. (Cather's maternal grandparents were slaveholders.) Native Americans receive only incidental mentions: that Red Cloud is named for the Oglala Lakota chief and that, as children, Willa and her brothers had "imagined themselves in Indian country in the Southwest desert. What adventures they would have!" Minor's watercolor-and-gouache pictures depict bucolic prairie scenes and town and city life; meadowlarks appear frequently.

A simplistic treatment for an audience likely unfamiliar with its subject. (timeline, thumbnail biographies of American women writers of Cather's time, bibliography) (Biography. 7-10)