A friendly guide to inspire kids and help adults craft memorable parties.
An illustrated guide to planning delicious, craft-filled parties.
Featuring 10 popular party themes, from dinosaurs to superheroes, fairies to pirates, each section of the book includes a cake, a main, side dishes, party crafts and favors, and decor for a festive atmosphere. Party planners are encouraged to mix and match, adding and adapting material from different sections to best fit their needs, and to design their own unique experiences. Modifications help meet the varied ages and skill levels of the party guests. Many recipes are made more accessible by using readily available, pre-made ingredients. Some recipes can be prepped and then finished by party guests. Most activities and recipes are simple, with just a few items and instructions, although a handful have longer lists of materials and more intricate steps. The whimsical illustrations and color photographs appear visually enticing and refreshingly realistic rather than Pinterest-perfect. Illustrated characters match each section’s theme, and the humans appear racially diverse. Iwai provides further guidance in the form of tips, techniques, common tools and equipment, and workarounds to save time or help avoid the need to buy specialized items. Templates and additional content are available for download on the author’s website.
A friendly guide to inspire kids and help adults craft memorable parties. (additional activities, index) (Nonfiction. 5-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780316297707
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A book about engineering notable mostly for its illustrations of diverse characters. (Board book. 1-3)
Babies and engineers have more in common than you think.
In this book, Alexander highlights the unlikely similarities between babies and engineers. Like engineers, babies ask questions, enjoy building, and learn from their mistakes. Black’s bold, colorful illustrations feature diverse babies and both male- and female-presenting adult characters with a variety of skin tones and hair colors, effectively demonstrating that engineers can be any race or either gender. (Nonbinary models are a little harder to see.) The story ends with a reassurance to the babies in the book that “We believe in you!” presumably implying that any child can be an engineer. The end pages include facts about different kinds of engineers and the basic process used by all engineers in their work. Although the book opens with a rhythmic rhyming couplet, the remaining text lacks the same structure and pattern, making it less entertaining to read. Furthermore, while some of the comparisons between babies and engineers are both clever and apt, others—such as the idea that babies know where to look for answers—are flimsier. The book ends with a text-heavy spread of facts about engineering that, bereft of illustrations, may not hold children’s attention as well as the previous pages. Despite these flaws, on its best pages, the book is visually stimulating, witty, and thoughtful.
A book about engineering notable mostly for its illustrations of diverse characters. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-31223-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Erupt into applause for this picture book of the first magma-tude.
A deceptively simple, visually appealing, comprehensive explanation of volcanoes.
Gibbons packs an impressive number of facts into this browsable nonfiction picture book. The text begins with the awe of a volcanic eruption: “The ground begins to rumble…ash, hot lava and rock, and gases shoot up into the air.” Diagrams of the Earth’s structural layers—inner and outer core, mantle, and crust—undergird a discussion about why volcanoes occur. Simple maps of the Earth’s seven major tectonic plates show where volcanoes are likeliest to develop. Other spreads with bright, clearly labeled illustrations cover intriguing subtopics: four types of volcanoes and how they erupt; underwater volcanoes; well-known volcanoes and historic volcanic eruptions around the world; how to be safe in the vicinity of a volcano; and the work of scientists studying volcanoes and helping to predict eruptions. A page of eight facts about volcanoes wraps things up. The straightforward, concise prose will be easy for young readers to follow. As always, Gibbons manages to present a great deal of information in a compact form.
Erupt into applause for this picture book of the first magma-tude. (Nonfiction picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4569-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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