Lively, funny, and mesmerizing.
In lavish visual detail, Rubin chronicles our changing perceptions of what dinosaurs were like.
“Science is a process,” Rubin writes, and he picks a terrific case study to demonstrate the point. He specifically looks at fossil spikes that were thought by early discoverers to go on Iguanodon’s nose until later studies proved that they were parts of the dino’s front feet. The author more generally chronicles how dinosaurs have been transformed in our minds over the past century or so from drab, lumpish, lizardlike behemoths to today’s vivid visions of active, often riotously decorated creatures with “baggy bits and saggy bits.” In both the narrative and in exuberant whirls of historical reconstructions and fanciful prehistoric scenes rich with stylistic homages, often linked by sinuous ribbons of running dates and facts, he pays fulsome tribute to many of the amateur and professional paleontologists (and particularly paleoartists) who shaped these visions over the years. So it is that young dinophiles who linger over the art will meet a host of individualized human figures from solitary diggers and sketchers to racially diverse crews of museum workers painstakingly assembling, and reassembling, fossil bones. The dinosaurian cast includes Iguanodon, who appears repeatedly in evolving iterations making grumpy or punning comments (“I DO look pretty terrible here”) at its head. Readers will come away vastly more appreciative of, and knowledgeable about, the architects of the ongoing “Dinosaur Renaissance.”
Lively, funny, and mesmerizing. (endnotes) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780063239210
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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