Eye-opening, encouraging, and attractive—a winning trifecta.
Hunt draws a welcoming introduction to the engineering trade, which isn’t just bridges, tunnels, and highways anymore.
Engineering has a hard-nosed reputation. Though it is true that engineers use “math, science and technology skills to find creative solutions to problems,” Hunt explains that their work is more than mastering a slide rule and engineering drawing. It’s the discipline’s creative aspect that Hunt concentrates on (“If existing technology won’t solve the problem, engineers create new technology, such as a machine that prints skin substitutes for burn victims”), and how cool is that? Hancock’s artwork is both bell-clear and engaging, a combination that might bring to mind David Macaulay but is a very different animal. Here the illustrations have a board-game appeal to complement the warmth of the writing, which remains approachable despite tongue twisters such as “manganese dioxide for the cathode, zinc for the anode and an alkaline (the opposite of acidic) substance called potassium hydroxide for the electrolyte.” Hunt explains the steps used in engineering design—defining the problem, investigating requirements, developing and comparing solutions, creating, testing, optimizing, sharing—bringing in examples that range from aerospace to biomedical to civil to geomantics (“These engineers monitor climate change, predict floods and study how animals adapt to changing environments”). As she makes her way through each example, an inventive use of iconographics informs readers when they are at each particular stage—comparing solutions, optimizing—of the design process.
Eye-opening, encouraging, and attractive—a winning trifecta. (Nonfiction. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77138-560-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Wordplay and wry wit put extra fun into a trove of fundamental knowledge.
With an amped-up sense of wonder, the Science Guy surveys the natural universe.
Starting from first principles like the scientific method, Nye and his co-author marvel at the “Amazing Machine” that is the human body then go on to talk up animals, plants, evolution, physics and chemistry, the quantum realm, geophysics, and climate change. They next venture out into the solar system and beyond. Along with tallying select aspects and discoveries in each chapter, the authors gather up “Massively Important” central concepts, send shoutouts to underrecognized women scientists like oceanographer Marie Tharp, and slip in directions for homespun experiments and demonstrations. They also challenge readers to ponder still-unsolved scientific posers and intersperse rousing quotes from working scientists about how exciting and wide open their respective fields are. If a few of those fields, like the fungal kingdom, get short shrift (one spare paragraph notwithstanding), readers are urged often enough to go look things up for themselves to kindle a compensatory habit. Aside from posed photos of Nye and a few more of children (mostly presenting as White) doing science-y things, the full-color graphic and photographic images not only reflect the overall “get this!” tone but consistently enrich the flow of facts and reflections. “Our universe is a strange and surprising place,” Nye writes. “Stay curious.” Words to live by.
Wordplay and wry wit put extra fun into a trove of fundamental knowledge. (contributors, art credits, selected bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 11-15)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4676-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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