A humorous take on an endlessly interesting subject.
From dancing to appease a weather god to observing and investigating with modern scientific tools, humans have come a long way in their understanding of the weather.
The author of previous titles about old and new ideas about dinosaurs and the solar system here introduces Earth’s weather and climate. This lighthearted overview skips lightly through history and around the world, giving examples of past weather explanations and prediction methods. Each former belief is contrasted with today’s understandings about: the water cycle; thunderstorms; the vital role of the sun and the importance of many other geographical factors; using instruments and satellites to make predictions of hurricanes and other weather phenomena; and past and present climate change, including modern global warming and new, more destructive weather patterns. About modern climate change deniers, Kudlinski boldly states, “Boy, are they wrong!” (One exception to the “Boy, were they wrong!” pattern is the 2,000-year-old adage about red skies in the morning. This works, and Kudlinski provides a scientific explanation.) Serra’s lively cartoon-style illustrations, created with pencil and computer graphics, are cheery and upbeat. Gray storms are contrasted with colorful indoor and outdoor scenes. Simplifying such a complex subject can lead to missteps, such as suggesting that “germs” can form the cores of raindrops rather than bacteria. But overall the information is appropriate for the intended readers.
A humorous take on an endlessly interesting subject. (timeline, websites) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3793-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Earnest and silly by turns, it doesn’t quite capture the attention or the imagination, although surely its heart is in the...
Rhymed couplets convey the story of a girl who likes to build things but is shy about it. Neither the poetry nor Rosie’s projects always work well.
Rosie picks up trash and oddments where she finds them, stashing them in her attic room to work on at night. Once, she made a hat for her favorite zookeeper uncle to keep pythons away, and he laughed so hard that she never made anything publicly again. But when her great-great-aunt Rose comes to visit and reminds Rosie of her own past building airplanes, she expresses her regret that she still has not had the chance to fly. Great-great-aunt Rose is visibly modeled on Rosie the Riveter, the iconic, red-bandanna–wearing poster woman from World War II. Rosie decides to build a flying machine and does so (it’s a heli-o-cheese-copter), but it fails. She’s just about to swear off making stuff forever when Aunt Rose congratulates her on her failure; now she can go on to try again. Rosie wears her hair swooped over one eye (just like great-great-aunt Rose), and other figures have exaggerated hairdos, tiny feet and elongated or greatly rounded bodies. The detritus of Rosie’s collections is fascinating, from broken dolls and stuffed animals to nails, tools, pencils, old lamps and possibly an erector set. And cheddar-cheese spray.
Earnest and silly by turns, it doesn’t quite capture the attention or the imagination, although surely its heart is in the right place. (historical note) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0845-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd.
This British import is an imaginatively constructed sequence of images that show a white boy examining a city pavement, clearly in London, and the sights he would see if he were able to travel down to the Earth’s core and then back again to the surface.
The geologic layers are depicted in 10 vertical spreads that require a 90-degree turn to be read and include endpapers, which open out, concertina fashion, to show the interior of the Earth to its core. Beneath the urban setting are drains, pipes, and artifacts of urban infrastructure. Below that, archaeological relics are revealed. An Underground train speeds by, and below it, a stalactite-encrusted cave yawns. Deep below the Earth’s crust, magma, the Earth’s mantle, and the inner core are shown. Turn the page to start going up again, back through the mantle to the crust, where precious minerals are revealed, then fossils, tree roots, and animal burrows, ending with the same boy in the English countryside. The painted, stenciled, and collaged illustrations are full-bleed, and the tones graduate pleasantly from light colors at the surface of the Earth to rich pinks, yellows, and oranges as readers near the Earth’s core. The text is informative, if lacking in poetry, including such nuggets as “earthworms are expert recyclers, eating dead plants in the soil.”
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68297-136-9
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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