Offbeat, weird, and wonderful.
Ready for a lesson in style?
Fans of proverbs and Chwast, rejoice—the perfect pairing is coming your way! Eighteen proverbs are captured in the author/illustrator’s signature style, each filling a double-page spread. The book depicts proverbs from around the world, from “Let sleeping dogs lie” to the Nigerian expression “When a mouse laughs at a cat there is a hole nearby” to the Japanese saying “Even a monkey can fall out of a tree.” The illustrations—with hand-lettered proverbs—stand alone on each page without comment or explanation. Savvy caregivers and educators will use each page as a springboard for conversations ranging from the immediate (“What does this mean?”) to the more elaborate (“What other proverbs do we say regularly?”). An afterword briefly touches on the cultural origins of many of the proverbs. Like most Chwast books, this is a study in art, as loose, colorful drawings fill the page and interact with the text in unusual ways. For example, “Don’t ride two horses at the same time” is written in speech balloons shared by the equine duo as a mustachioed rider straddles the pair. On the page labeled “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” the O of over cleverly becomes a crying mouth, while the S of spilled pours out of a sideways cup. As a whole, the book is a delight. Human characters depicted are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Offbeat, weird, and wonderful. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781662651175
Page Count: 40
Publisher: minedition
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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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