An entertaining presentation of a fascinating topic that’s more substantive and challenging than it looks. (Nonfiction....
What if you couldn’t remember a face—even your own? Imagine not being able to forget anything from your past. What if you had Barbie-doll hair, so stiff you couldn’t possibly comb it?
Birmingham takes readers through an amazing variety of offbeat conditions, most of them inherited and some of them extremely rare. While this brief effort packs in ample information, the attractive format, casual with brightly colored pages and cartoonlike illustrations on each spread, combines with the high-interest topic to make it appear readily approachable. However, the vocabulary level and the explanations of the causes for some of the conditions are relatively complex. Some of the conditions—or “quirks” according to the subtitle—include developmental topographical disorientation, which causes sufferers to fail to recognize familiar surroundings, making it possible to get lost in one’s own home; double-jointedness; sleepwalking; color blindness; heightened ability to taste; and synesthesia, a condition that associates numbers, letters, words or music with colors. Many of the topics include a “What’s it like?” section: a brief, informative interview with a person who has that condition. Additional facts are tucked into boxes throughout, like the stages of sleep, types of joints in the human body and the anatomy of a hair follicle.
An entertaining presentation of a fascinating topic that’s more substantive and challenging than it looks. (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77147-010-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
A beautiful conservation story told in a rich setting and peopled with memorable characters.
Unlike the rest of her nature-obsessed family, Louisa wants to be a musician, not a biologist.
But when Louisa’s mother finds out that the Australian government is about to destroy the Tasmanian rainforest camp their family has managed for decades, she insists that Louisa leave Toronto and spend the summer on the strange, small island with her even stranger uncle Ruff. But when Uncle Ruff gives Louisa a copy of her great-grandmother’s journal, Louisa becomes fascinated with her family’s history of secretly protecting endangered species, including the mysterious Tasmanian tiger, widely regarded as extinct. With the help of her new friend and neighbor Colin—a boy who has autism spectrum disorder—Louisa deepens her connection with her family’s land, with history, and with her love of music. Kadarusman masterfully creates a lush, magical world where issues associated with conservation, neurodiversity, and history intersect in surprising and authentic ways. The book’s small cast of characters (principals seem all White) is well drawn and endearing. Crucially, the author acknowledges the original, Indigenous inhabitants of the land as experts, something rarely seen in books about environmental degradation. Louisa’s narratorial voice strikes the right balance of curiosity, timidity, and growing confidence, and her character’s transformation feels both incredibly natural and incredibly rewarding to behold.
A beautiful conservation story told in a rich setting and peopled with memorable characters. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77278-054-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pajama Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Middle school worries and social issues skillfully woven into a moving, hopeful, STEM-related tale.
Following the precise coordinates of geocaching doesn’t yield the treasure Kirby Zagonski Jr. seeks: his missing father.
Geeky eighth-grader Kirby can’t understand why his mother won’t call his dad after their generous landlady dies and they’re evicted for nonpayment of rent. Though his parents have been divorced for several years and his father, a wealthy developer, has been unreliable, Kirby is sure he could help. Instead he and his mother move to the Community Hospitality Center, a place “for the poor. The unfortunate. The homeless.” Suddenly A-student Kirby doesn’t have a quiet place to do his schoolwork or even a working pencil. They share a “family room” with a mother and young son fleeing abuse. Trying to hide this from his best friends, Gianna and Ruby, is a struggle, especially as they spend after-school hours together. The girls help him look for the geocaches visited by “Senior Searcher,” a geocacher Kirby is sure is his father. There are ordinary eighth-grade complications in this contemporary friendship tale, too; Gianna just might be a girlfriend, and there’s a dance coming up. Kirby’s first-person voice is authentic, his friends believable, and the adults both sometimes helpful and sometimes unthinkingly cruel. The setting is the largely white state of Vermont, but the circumstances could be anywhere.
Middle school worries and social issues skillfully woven into a moving, hopeful, STEM-related tale. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68119-548-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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