Sharply reproduced black-and-white and full-color portraits, cityscapes, and images—cropped into ovals and rectangles, arranged in generous amounts of space—of quaintly angular mechanical devices visually document some of the changes wrought to 19th- century and early 20th-century American industry and home life by a flood of new inventions. It's an idealized picture: George Ferris's giant wheel looms over the 1893 Columbian Exposition; an office worker kicks back, eating an apple, presumably freed from drudgery by the typewriter; farmers lounge atop a rickety combine. This largely disappointing album in the Library of Congress Book series is as bland as a politician's speech. The brief, hyperbolic, present-tense text will leave readers feeling good about this period in history, but only marginally better informed about it. Sandler (Immigrants, p. 232, etc.) names inventors and their products, but seldom describes how either person or invention worked; acknowledges the contributions of African-Americans while relegating women to classes in how to board trolleys decorously; and devotes a single page to inventions of the last 75 years. The pictures are pretty; the history is simplistic and slanted. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 31, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-024923-4
Page Count: 93
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
Remarking that ``nothing about the weather is very simple,'' Simon goes on to describe how the sun, atmosphere, earth's rotation, ground cover, altitude, pollution, and other factors influence it; briefly, he also tells how weather balloons gather information. Even for this outstanding author, it's a tough, complex topic, and he's not entirely successful in simplifying it; moreover, the import of the striking uncaptioned color photos here isn't always clear. One passage—``Cumulus clouds sometimes build up into towering masses called cumulus congestus, or swelling cumulus, which may turn into cumulonimbus clouds''—is superimposed on a blue-gray, cloud-covered landscape. But which kind of clouds are these? Another photo, in blue-black and white, shows what might be precipitation in the upper atmosphere, or rain falling on a darkened landscape, or...? Generally competent and certainly attractive, but not Simon's best. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-10546-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
Miranda’s book counts the monsters gathering at a birthday party, while a simple rhyming text keeps the tally and surveys the action: “Seven starved monsters are licking the dishes./Eight blow out candles and make birthday wishes.” The counting proceeds to ten, then by tens to fifty, then gradually returns to one, which makes the monster’s mother, a purple pin-headed octopus, very happy. The book is surprisingly effective due to Powell’s artwork; the color has texture and density, as if it were poured onto the page, but the real attention-getter is the singularity of every monster attendee. They are highly individual and, therefore, eminently countable. As the numbers start crawling upward, it is both fun and a challenge to try to recognize monsters who have appeared in previous pages, or to attempt to stay focused when counting the swirling or bunched creatures. The story has glints of humor, and in combination with the illustrations is a grand addition to the counting shelf. (Picture book. 3-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201835-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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