A bodacious wellspring of random knowledge.
It’s a sucker’s “bet” if ever there was one, as every page of this brightly illustrated browser’s delight features a multiplicity of mind-boggling facts.
Cued up in groups of 10 per spread (with occasional variations) beneath about 70 topical rubrics, pithy gosh-wow–isms in boldface type and emphatic colors focus mainly on the natural world with excursions into history, holidays, and curious cultural practices. Sharp photos and graphic images—mostly of animals, with human figures a rare but diverse minority—in a range of sizes are treats for the eyes. So too are claims that rats can’t throw up, raw termites taste like pineapple, “One cyclops from Greek mythology liked to snack on humans,” and hundreds of other did-you-knows to absorbent young brains. Wordier excursions to, for instance, visit Petra and Machu Picchu or to explain the differences between “affect” and “effect” or macarons and macaroons offer changes of pace, but the whole outing is really tailor-made for dipping and flipping at random. And, wild as some entries seem, there aren’t any patent absurdities, even when enthusiasm trumps precise language and notwithstanding a breezy assurance standing in for actual source citations that everything here is “carefully researched.”
A bodacious wellspring of random knowledge. (index) (Nonfiction. 7-12)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2837-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote...
Two republished tales by a Greco-Cherokee author feature both folkloric and modern elements as well as new illustrations.
One of the two has never been offered south of the (Canadian) border. In “Coyote Sings to the Moon,” the doo-wop hymn sung nightly by Old Woman and all the animals except tone-deaf Coyote isn’t enough to keep Moon from hiding out at the bottom of the lake—until she is finally driven forth by Coyote’s awful wailing. She has been trying to return to the lake ever since, but that piercing howl keeps her in the sky. In “Coyote’s New Suit” he is schooled in trickery by Raven, who convinces him to steal the pelts of all the other animals while they’re bathing, sends the bare animals to take clothes from the humans’ clothesline, and then sets the stage for a ruckus by suggesting that Coyote could make space in his overcrowded closet by having a yard sale. No violence ensues, but from then to now humans and animals have not spoken to one another. In Eggenschwiler’s monochrome scenes Coyote and the rest stand on hind legs and (when stripped bare) sport human limbs. Old Woman might be Native American; the only other completely human figure is a pale-skinned girl.
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote tales. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-833-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book....
From funeral clown to cheese sculptor, a tally of atypical trades.
This free-wheeling survey, framed as a visit to “The Great Hall of Jobs,” is designed to shake readers loose from simplistic notions of the world of work. Labarre opens with a generic sculpture gallery of, as she puts it, “The Classics”—doctor, dancer, farmer, athlete, chef, and the like—but quickly moves on, arranging busy cartoon figures by the dozen in kaleidoscopic arrays, with pithy captions describing each occupation. As changes of pace she also tucks in occasional challenges to match select workers (Las Vegas wedding minister, “ethical” hacker, motion-capture actor) with their distinctive tools or outfits. The actual chances of becoming, say, the queen’s warden of the swans or a professional mattress jumper, not to mention the nitty-gritty of physical or academic qualifications, income levels, and career paths, are left largely unspecified…but along with noting that new jobs are being invented all the time (as, in the illustration, museum workers wheel in a “vlogger” statue), the author closes with the perennial insight that it’s essential to love what you do and the millennial one that there’s nothing wrong with repeatedly switching horses midstream. The many adult figures and the gaggle of children (one in a wheelchair) visiting the “Hall” are diverse of feature, sex, and skin color.
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1219-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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