An understandable, fun introduction to environmental issues that could spark ideas for green inventions.
A boy realizes how his invention and other contributions can help the environment in this illustrated children’s book from a husband-and-wife team.
Noah Fairley, a White boy with big blue eyes, is a bit nervous about making his presentation to the Inventor’s Fair, focused this year on ways to protect the environment. He’s spent many weekends (and his own money) doing research and tinkering with his project. Being able to effect real change matters to Noah, but can his little contribution do that? As he waits his turn, he listens carefully to his classmates’ addresses. Each explains an important environmental challenge and offers a homemade device to help meet it. For example, Leila Tanaka reports that greenhouse gases created by fossil fuels trap heat, harming the climate and wildlife. Her invention is a “solar tree,” realistic but artificial, whose leaves are solar panels that collect and store clean, renewable energy. As he listens, Noah gets ideas to enhance his own invention, which is a remote-controlled device that scoops up plastic and garbage from the ocean so that it can be recycled. Noah’s invention inspires his family and others to go green, and he realizes that even small changes can make a difference. In Book 4 of their If Not You, Then Who? series, the Pridhams provide solid information about climate change, habitat loss, water conservation, and similar subjects. Noah’s idealism is appealing, and the Inventor’s Fair, where kids explain things to kids, makes the concepts approachable and stokes enthusiasm for helping the environment. Illustrating her latest children’s book, Rouaux delivers digital images that show with clarity and charm how the inventions work; most characters depicted are White, but there’s some diversity. The work includes resources for learning more information and taking action.
An understandable, fun introduction to environmental issues that could spark ideas for green inventions.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951317-09-6
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Weeva
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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