A damp squib next to the many Apollo 11 commemorations that soar.
Three buddies help one another travel to the moon and back.
Leaning heavily on the bro-ness of the enterprise, Tucker describes how “Mike,” “Neil,” and “Buzz” trained and prepared together, then, while the world watched, went “where no human had been before” (or “no man” as she again misquotes the line later on but using its original sexist language) and returned to wild acclaim: “They even met the pope!” With distressing disregard for accuracy she pulls sound bites from the historic flight’s transcripts but alters them to suit and twice explains that “Mike” was responsible for rescuing his teammates if anything went wrong…when in truth, except for a few limited situations, that would have been impossible. In Radford’s simply drawn cartoons, views of the three White astronauts hanging together, sometimes with hands on arms, are more aspirational than strictly true to life (Michael Collins famously characterized their relationship as “amiable strangers”), and considering contemporary photographs, the veracity of a scene showing a racially and gender diverse Mission Control staff seems doubtful too. But the theme the author hammers home in her trite summation is firmly in the pilot’s seat throughout: “They worked hard and look [sic] after each other, and together they reached for the stars!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A damp squib next to the many Apollo 11 commemorations that soar. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7112-6380-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era.
The New Orleans school child who famously broke the color line in 1960 while surrounded by federal marshals describes the early days of her experience from a 6-year-old’s perspective.
Bridges told her tale to younger children in 2009’s Ruby Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes. “I didn’t find out what being ‘the first’ really meant until the day I arrived at this new school,” she writes. Unfrightened by the crowd of “screaming white people” that greets her at the school’s door (she thinks it’s like Mardi Gras) but surprised to find herself the only child in her classroom, and even the entire building, she gradually realizes the significance of her act as (in Smith’s illustration) she compares a small personal photo to the all-White class photos posted on a bulletin board and sees the difference. As she reflects on her new understanding, symbolic scenes first depict other dark-skinned children marching into classes in her wake to friendly greetings from lighter-skinned classmates (“School is just school,” she sensibly concludes, “and kids are just kids”) and finally an image of the bright-eyed icon posed next to a soaring bridge of reconciliation. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era. (author and illustrator notes, glossary) (Autobiographical picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75388-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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