Erg, a cartoon energy-bolt, narrates this electrifying introduction to the basics of energy. A spread is devoted to each of the many types of energy, how they are harnessed, their uses and their pros and cons: Fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, water, geothermal and plant-based energy are all discussed. Leedy presents difficult concepts in a way that even younger readers can understand, encapsulating the key essentials and leaving the complex details for older readers’ texts. Additional pages explain the generation of electricity, address the problem of global warming and educate readers about how they can help save energy. Throughout, the watercolor-and-digital artwork cleverly illustrates the concepts presented in the text with cartoons, diagrams and sketches. The author’s whimsical anthropomorphized electrical outlets and devices keep readers’ attention and provide further information. Backmatter includes more energy facts and ways to save energy as well as additional cons against fossil-fuel usage. What Anne Rockwell and Paul Meisel’s What’s So Bad About Gasoline? (2009) did for fossil fuels, this book does for energy as a whole. (Informational picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2220-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sloat collaborates with Huffman, a Yu’pik storyteller, to infuse a traditional “origins” tale with the joy of creating. Hearing the old women of her village grumble that they have only tasteless crowberries for the fall feast’s akutaq—described as “Eskimo ice cream,” though the recipe at the end includes mixing in shredded fish and lard—young Anana carefully fashions three dolls, then sings and dances them to life. Away they bound, to cover the hills with cranberries, blueberries, and salmonberries. Sloat dresses her smiling figures in mixes of furs and brightly patterned garb, and sends them tumbling exuberantly through grassy tundra scenes as wildlife large and small gathers to look on. Despite obtrusively inserted pronunciations for Yu’pik words in the text, young readers will be captivated by the action, and by Anana’s infectious delight. (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-88240-575-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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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