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
The Pumpkin Book (32 pp.; $16.95; Sept. 15; 0-8234-1465-5): From seed to vine and blossom to table, Gibbons traces the growth cycle of everyone’s favorite autumn symbol—the pumpkin. Meticulous drawings detail the transformation of tiny seeds to the colorful gourds that appear at roadside stands and stores in the fall. Directions for planting a pumpkin patch, carving a jack-o’-lantern, and drying the seeds give young gardeners the instructions they need to grow and enjoy their own golden globes. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1465-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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