Likely to help normalize a universal experience.
An overview of select funerary practices and customs worldwide, offered in hopes of giving bereaved young readers some comfort or perspective.
Introducing herself as a “psychopomp,” or spirit guide for her (living) readers, Chavez opens with soothing remarks about how death is a part of life. She quotes an expert’s savvy insight that grief can’t be “fixed” but with sympathetic help can be “carried.” From there, she touches on a series of helpful, informative topics from funeral home embalming and the stages of physical decomposition to food, flowers, and festivals associated with funerals, as well as memorials of both the physical and virtual “necrotech” sorts. Her wide-ranging discussions of burial practices “green” and otherwise include descriptions of cremation, composting, and aquamation: “People are always inventing ways to make death care more meaningful, accessible, and environmentally friendly.” If some of her glancing claims about many beliefs and practices tend toward the general—“special devices” delivered “libations” to the dead in ancient Rome—they may spur readers on to further research. Sharp comments about archeological grave robbers and racially segregated cemeteries, for example, serve as occasional reminders that the topic has controversial issues. In brightly hued cartoon images, Le Large scatters a racially and culturally diverse cast of corpses and survivors, along with death-related artifacts from hearses and caskets to columbaria and catacombs.
Likely to help normalize a universal experience. (glossary, index) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781684493753
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Neon Squid/Macmillan
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Shot through with vague generalities and paired to a mix of equally generic period images and static new art, this overview remorselessly sucks all the juice from its topic.
This survey of the growth of industries in this country from the Colonial period to the post–World War II era is written in the driest of textbook-ese: “Factories needed good transportation so that materials could reach them and so that materials could reach buyers”; “The metal iron is obtained by heating iron ore”; “In 1860, the North said that free men, not slaves, should do the work.” This text is supplemented by a jumble of narrative-overview blocks, boxed side observations and terse captions on each thematic spread. The design is packed with overlapping, misleadingly seamless and rarely differentiated mixes of small, heavily trimmed contemporary prints or (later) photos and drab reconstructions of workshop or factory scenes, along with pictures of significant inventions and technological innovations (which are, in several cases, reduced to background design elements). The single, tiny map has no identifying labels. Other new entries in the All About America series deal similarly with Explorers, Trappers, and Pioneers, A Nation of Immigrants and Stagecoaches and Railroads. Utilitarian, at best—but more likely to dim reader interest than kindle it. (index, timeline, resource lists) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7534-6670-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
The sense of wonder that infuses each simply worded chapter is contagious, and some of the photos are soooo cuuuuute.
The author of an adult book about uncommon animal attachments invites emergent readers to share the warm (Unlikely Friendships, 2011).
This is the first of four spinoffs, all rewritten and enhanced with fetching color photographs of the subject. It pairs a very young rhesus monkey with a dove, one cat with a zoo bear and another that became a “seeing-eye cat” for a blind dog (!), an old performing elephant with a stray dog and a lion in the Kenyan wild with a baby oryx. Refreshingly, the author, a science writer, refrains from offering facile analyses of the relationships’ causes or homiletic commentary. Instead, she explains how each companionship began, what is surprising about it and also how some ended, from natural causes or otherwise. There is a regrettable number of exclamation points, but they are in keeping with the overall enthusiastic tone.
The sense of wonder that infuses each simply worded chapter is contagious, and some of the photos are soooo cuuuuute. (animal and word lists) (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7611-7011-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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