A succinct and compelling Covid-19 analysis, packed with valuable information for readers young and old.
An easy-to-follow illustrated guide to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Persad, the author the Garbology Kids book series about waste management, provides a comprehensive discussion of the novel coronavirus, addressing how it spreads throughout a community, the development of vaccines to fight it, and how the pandemic has affected people’s mental health, among other issues. Persad’s logically organized work simplifies the subject of Covid-19 research, beginning with a basic examination of viruses in general, including their size and structure, and how they replicate within the body. Other fundamental topics include a discussion of how mutations can lead to the creation of new viral strains that can spread from humans to animals. Persad offers an examination of other prevalent global viruses, as well as historical pandemics, but, as one might expect, much of the book is dedicated to an analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants of concern, including the Delta variant, which is dominant as of this writing. The author outlines exactly what makes this virus particularly deadly for some people, and it also assists readers with distinguishing the symptoms of Covid-19 from other common ailments, which will help many readers to understand when to seek medical help. This work will be particularly useful for younger readers, due to the inclusion of Persad’s lively illustrations, colorful charts, and text boxes, but there’s valuable information here for people of all ages, presented in a simple, straightforward style. In a time of medical and economic uncertainty, discussions of the pandemic can be emotionally challenging, but Persad consistently provides interesting side stories to keep readers engaged, such as how an understanding of cowpox led to the creation of a smallpox vaccine. The early material effectively lays the groundwork for a deeper understanding of pandemics in general, and offers clues to our own future.
A succinct and compelling Covid-19 analysis, packed with valuable information for readers young and old.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9812439-3-1
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Firewater Media Group
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Small but mighty necessary reading.
A miniature manifesto for radical queer acceptance that weaves together the personal and political.
Eli, a cis gay white Jewish man, uses his own identities and experiences to frame and acknowledge his perspective. In the prologue, Eli compares the global Jewish community to the global queer community, noting, “We don’t always get it right, but the importance of showing up for other Jews has been carved into the DNA of what it means to be Jewish. It is my dream that queer people develop the same ideology—what I like to call a Global Queer Conscience.” He details his own isolating experiences as a queer adolescent in an Orthodox Jewish community and reflects on how he and so many others would have benefitted from a robust and supportive queer community. The rest of the book outlines 10 principles based on the belief that an expectation of mutual care and concern across various other dimensions of identity can be integrated into queer community values. Eli’s prose is clear, straightforward, and powerful. While he makes some choices that may be divisive—for example, using the initialism LGBTQIAA+ which includes “ally”—he always makes clear those are his personal choices and that the language is ever evolving.
Small but mighty necessary reading. (resources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09368-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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