A focused and earnest guide for young dog lovers.
A dog cognition researcher adopts a puppy and observes her development through a scientific and personal lens.
This guide to dog development is organized chronologically, from the birth of a litter of puppies through each week of their development until they are adopted. The book continues through one puppy’s first year as she adapts to home life, and the family members—Horowitz, her husband, her son, two older dogs, and a cat—adjust to her presence. The author folds plenty of scientific information about canine development and socialization into her personal narrative, using advanced vocabulary that’s defined in-text. In parallel with her observations of new family member Quiddity—Quid for short—the author tacks on information about a litter of puppies who are being raised to be working dogs, for whom the training and expectations are very different than for family pets. The book also features cute photos, fun lists (“Some things the puppy has eaten/chewed that are not for eating/chewing: an observational study”), and even an Ear Semaphore Code chart. Horowitz acknowledges that dog cognition researchers “can be too close to our subjects to see them well,” which may be especially true if the dogs are their own, but readers interested in a dog’s world and how humans and dogs communicate will find a wealth of information here.
A focused and earnest guide for young dog lovers. (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593351307
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative.
This junior edition of Stewart’s lurid 2011 portrait gallery of the same name (though much less gleeful subtitle) loses none of its capacity for leaving readers squicked-out.
The author drops a few entries, notably the one on insect sexual practices, and rearranges toned-down versions of the rest into roughly topical sections. Beginning with the same cogent observation—“We are seriously outnumbered”—she follows general practice in thrillers of this ilk by defining “bug” broadly enough to include all-too-detailed descriptions of the life cycles and revolting or deadly effects of scorpions and spiders, ticks, lice, and, in a chapter evocatively titled “The Enemy Within,” such internal guests as guinea worms and tapeworms. Mosquitoes, bedbugs, the ubiquitous “Filth Fly,” and like usual suspects mingle with more-exotic threats, from the tongue-eating louse and a “yak-killer hornet” (just imagine) to the aggressive screw-worm fly that, in one cited case, flew up a man’s nose and laid hundreds of eggs…that…hatched. Morrow-Cribbs’ close-up full-color drawings don’t offer the visceral thrills of the photos in, for instance, Rebecca L. Johnson’s Zombie Makers (2012) but are accurate and finely detailed enough to please even the fussiest young entomologists.
Entomophobes will find all of this horrifyingly informative. (index, glossary, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61620-755-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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