Skill and persistence lead to STEM success against historical odds in this brief and attractive biography.
Jan Matzeliger’s name might not be on everyone’s lips, but it should be on everyone’s feet.
The son of a mechanic-shop owner, Jan was raised in Dutch-speaking Suriname. At 19, he began working on a merchant ship, sailing around the world until he landed in Philadelphia. (The year is unspecified, but readers are told that “the Civil War had ended nearly a decade earlier.”) As “a Black immigrant who couldn’t speak English,” Jan struggled but found work in a shoe factory. Seeing the labor-intensive hand process used to sew a shoe’s upper piece to its sole, he proposed mechanizing the task. The other workers scoffed. Even after moving to a shoe-manufacturing center in Lynn, Massachusetts, Jan still met with skepticism, but he persisted, arduously building his machine (which dramatically increased productivity) and receiving a patent. Keller details Jan’s painstaking process, reinforcing the message of perseverance. Costanza’s flat, clear illustrations, in muted sepia and blue, abound in period details. They are slightly stylized and somewhat fanciful but reflect photographic evidence of Matzeliger’s appearance and provide touches of humor. Playful use of typography and depictions of the machine parts Jan designed add appeal. Only the final pages of the backmatter reveal that Matzeliger died of tuberculosis at 37, just six years after his patent was approved.
Skill and persistence lead to STEM success against historical odds in this brief and attractive biography. (Picture-book biography. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781534113008
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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
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