More and more young people are interested in where their food comes from, and this volume offers one fascinating part of the...
Clarence Birdseye, written about in three previous works for adults by Kurlansky—Cod (1997), Salt (2002) and The Last Fish Tale (2009)—takes center stage as the creator of a new food industry in this young-readers’ adaptation of Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man (2012).
Clarence Birdseye, like many inventors, was ahead of his time. When he created a new freezing process for food in 1927, there were no trucks or trains capable of transporting frozen food and no warehouses or stores able to store it. There was not even a market for frozen food; Birdseye had to create a market and an infrastructure to support it. Now, frozen foods are a given, and few people know that a real person is behind that package of Birdseye peas. This edition retains the essentials of Birdseye’s fascinating story from the original, though a useful preface was dropped and a prologue added that condescends to young readers with its discussion of “the nerds of the Industrial Revolution” who made fortunes without even finishing college. Another distressing byproduct of this adaptation is that several sections are not as clearly written as in the original. Overall, though, it’s a fascinating story of curiosity, imagination and invention.
More and more young people are interested in where their food comes from, and this volume offers one fascinating part of the story. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74388-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats.
Why should grown-ups get all the historical, scientific, athletic, cinematic, and artistic glory?
Choosing exemplars from both past and present, Mitchell includes but goes well beyond Alexander the Great, Anne Frank, and like usual suspects to introduce a host of lesser-known luminaries. These include Shapur II, who was formally crowned king of Persia before he was born, Indian dancer/professional architect Sheila Sri Prakash, transgender spokesperson Jazz Jennings, inventor Param Jaggi, and an international host of other teen or preteen activists and prodigies. The individual portraits range from one paragraph to several pages in length, and they are interspersed with group tributes to, for instance, the Nazi-resisting “Swingkinder,” the striking New York City newsboys, and the marchers of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Mitchell even offers would-be villains a role model in Elagabalus, “boy emperor of Rome,” though she notes that he, at least, came to an awful end: “Then, then! They dumped his remains in the Tiber River, to be nommed by fish for all eternity.” The entries are arranged in no evident order, and though the backmatter includes multiple booklists, a personality quiz, a glossary, and even a quick Braille primer (with Braille jokes to decode), there is no index. Still, for readers whose fires need lighting, there’s motivational kindling on nearly every page.
A breezy, bustling bucketful of courageous acts and eye-popping feats. (finished illustrations not seen) (Collective biography. 10-13)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-751813-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Puffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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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