A truly long field trip, with nary a map nor a timeline but unusual stops aplenty.
The Magic School Bus must be in the garage, but teacherly chaperon Professor Tempo not only expedites the outing, but even looks like Ms. Frizzle (in slacks).
Though he professes boredom, her student Augustus turns out to have a rather encyclopedic grasp on historical highlights. Teacher in tow, he skitters chronologically through past eras, from the first harnessing of fire 1 million years ago or so (“I know—awesome, eh?”) to 1969’s moon landing. Along the way he name-checks platoons of historical figures including six ancient Olympic champions, Nefertiti, and “Tutankhamen’s mother,” Qutb-ud-din Aybak, first sultan of Delhi, Leonardo (“bit of a genius”), Ada Lovelace, Australian pioneer pilot Nancy-Bird Walton, Einstein (“a friendly dude”), and three of the five Marx Brothers. Done in the flat, retro, screen-print look of M. Sasek’s This Is… series, Stevenson’s stylized illustrations are crowded with labeled figures in period costume, but Augustus, sporting red glasses and schoolboy shorts, can be picked out easily enough. Despite good intentions, it’s a Eurocentric tour, with the slanted eyes of Qin Shi Huang and associates adding that parochial flavor…but readers touch down at least once on every inhabited continent, and Augustus’ interests run more to arts, trains, and people than to wars and disasters.
A truly long field trip, with nary a map nor a timeline but unusual stops aplenty. (resource list, index) (Informational picture book. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84780-704-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Undisguised ephemera.
With help from a CD-sized cardboard decoder disk, young archaeologists can discover for themselves that the ancient Atlantean language was actually English.
Threaded together along a thin and thoroughly predictable plotline involving a fictional 19th-century submarine expedition to the Mediterranean, this low-budget item assembles a hodgepodge of facts about Minoans and mazes, underwater archaeology, mapmaking history and theories about Atlantis. It lays these out along with easily spotted “clues” to the legendary island’s location on old documents and artifacts. Many of said clues are short messages slightly hidden behind a substitution code that uses modified Roman capitals. Exceptionally lazy readers can skip to the end to find the translations, along with solutions to other conundrums posed during the expedition’s contrived misadventures. Printed on heavy stock with an occasional side flap, the spreads all offer a visual jumble of narrative blocks, small historical images, photos of live models in period dress and new art to fill in the gaps.
Undisguised ephemera. (Novelty. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7534-6680-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
An inventive introduction to a fascinating historical figure.
Another collaborative effort by the team that created The Poet King of Tezcoco: A Great Leader of Ancient Mexico (2007) chronicles the life of a controversial figure in pre-colonial Mesoamerica.
The indigenous woman who would serve as Hernán Cortés’ interpreter and companion was born in the early 1500s as Malinali and later christened Marina. She is now called La Malinche. Besides serving as translator to the Spaniard, she also gave him advice on native customs, religious beliefs and the ways of the Aztec. While Marina’s decision to help the Spanish in their often brutal quest for supremacy has led to many negative associations, others see her as the mother of all Mexicans, as she and Cortés had the first recorded mestizo. Although many of the details surrounding the specifics of Marina’s life were unrecorded, Serrano strengthens the narrative with quotations by her contemporaries and provides a balanced look at the life of a complicated, oft-maligned woman. Headers provide structure as events sometimes shift from the specific to the very broad, and some important facts are glossed over or relegated to the timeline. Reminiscent of pre-colonial documents, the illustrations convey both Marina’s adulation of Cortés and the violence of the Spanish conquest, complete with severed limbs, decapitations and more.
An inventive introduction to a fascinating historical figure. (map, chronology, glossary, sources and further reading) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55498-111-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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