Measure this book in the big smiles it will elicit.
Measure with pleasure!
This marvelously written book, expressed in jaunty verses that scan beautifully, teaches readers how to measure all sorts of things, using a variety of standard measuring units, such as seconds, inches, years, decibels, and lumens. (Did we mention that the book is also a nifty vocabulary developer?) Perhaps even more important, the volume challenges youngsters to get creative and “measure” intangibles such as life experiences—including friendship. In other words, “How about getting some measuring done / in ways that are wildly, wonderfully fun?” Readers can measure bike rides not just by distance, but by feeling the “whooshing of wind as we go,” rainfall by how many puddles we can skip and hop into, and growth “in how far we jump, in how high we swing.” And how about considering books not just in terms of the numbers of pages read or time spent reading, but by counting how many monsters are in a story or how many times we laughed, cried, or cheered for the tale’s heroes? Cheerful, dynamic illustrations, rendered in ink and pencil and colored digitally, depict characters who are diverse in terms of race and age. Children will love volunteering their ideas for measuring things in their own lives.
Measure this book in the big smiles it will elicit. (systems of measurement, units of measurement in this book and beyond, let’s measure together!) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781797212159
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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