Skip.
A compact survey of world myths and legends.
Explaining that “myths are stories people used to tell to explain things they didn’t understand about their history, nature, or the world around them” and that “legends may once have been based on truth” but “have become fabulous fantasies,” Lawrence presents a smattering of notable characters and tales. The Greeks get a fair amount of attention, with the stories of Heracles, Theseus, Jason, and Pandora each afforded a double-page spread. As the book is quite small (5 ¾ inches high by 7 ½ inches across), that’s just a few sentences each. Other characters are grouped thematically (Robin Hood, Sun Wukong, Finn McCool, and Kintaro are “heroes”; Baba Yaga, Baron Samedi, Medusa, and Set are “the bad guys”). Although it’s clear Lawrence has worked not to limit herself to European mythology, her efforts at inclusivity are ham-handed at best. Next to a picture that looks suspiciously like Disney’s Pocahontas is a brief blurb on the generic “Native American spirit Sky Woman” (printed in black ink on dark-purple paper, so many readers may skip this anyway). Stories from extant cosmologies are presented alongside dead ones with no explanation, so readers who don’t know better may come away thinking Hinduism is as passé as the Norse pantheon, for instance. Equally troubling, stories and figures from the Abrahamic traditions are entirely absent, setting up a false opposition among belief systems.
Skip. (Nonfiction. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944530-11-2
Page Count: 72
Publisher: 360 Degrees
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit.
The bubble-helmeted feline explains what rockets do and the role they have played in sending people (and animals) into space.
Addressing a somewhat younger audience than in previous outings (Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, 2013, etc.), Astro Cat dispenses with all but a light shower of “factoroids” to describe how rockets work. A highly selective “History of Space Travel” follows—beginning with a crew of fruit flies sent aloft in 1947, later the dog Laika (her dismal fate left unmentioned), and the human Yuri Gagarin. Then it’s on to Apollo 11 in 1969; the space shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Challenger (the fates of the latter two likewise elided); the promise of NASA’s next-gen Orion and the Space Launch System; and finally vague closing references to other rockets in the works for local tourism and, eventually, interstellar travel. In the illustrations the spacesuited professor, joined by a mouse and cat in similar dress, do little except float in space and point at things. Still, the art has a stylish retro look, and portraits of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford diversify an otherwise all-white, all-male astronaut corps posing heroically or riding blocky, geometric spacecraft across starry reaches.
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911171-55-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A broad, if hardly more than skin-deep, introduction to the topic.
Four double-foldout spreads literally extend this first gander at our body’s insides and outsides—to jumbo, if not quite life, size.
Labels, basic facts, and one-sentence comments surround full-length cartoon images of the skeleton, musculature, and major sections of the body on the foldouts. Selected parts from the brain on down to blood cells are covered on the leaves in between. Lacey dishes out explanations of major body systems and processes in resolutely nontechnical language: “When you eat, food goes on a long twisty journey, zigzagging through tubes and turning into a soupy mush for your body to use.” It’s lightly spiced with observations that, for instance, the “gluteus maximus” is the largest muscle or the spine is made up of “vertebrae.” So light is the once-over, however, that the lymphatic, renal, and most of the endocrine systems escape notice (kidneys, where are you?). Moreover, though printed on durable card stock, the foldouts make for unwieldy handling, and on some pages, images are so scattered that successive stages of various processes require numbering. Still, Web links on the publisher’s page will presumably help to cover the gaps (unavailable for review). An overview of human development from fertilization to adulthood precedes a closing flurry of height extremes and other “Amazing body facts” that provide proper closure for this elementary survey.
A broad, if hardly more than skin-deep, introduction to the topic. (Nonfiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7945-3596-4
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Usborne
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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