Unusual in both subject and its gratifying level of technical detail.
A warm salute to an undersung Black scientist.
Budding inventors could do worse than to pick Jim West as a role model. Growing up a farm boy with a compulsion to take things apart to see how they worked and—thanks to an encounter with a live wire he was lucky to survive—a fascination with electricity, West went on to study science in college, where he was one of only two Black students. He supported himself by repairing TVs and eventually built a career from a summer internship at Bell Labs. There (generally posed as a solitary figure with an intent look in Fiadzigbey’s illustrations) he worked on an improved design for headphones and discovered a new way to make microphones using Teflon and other “electrets,” or substances that hold electrical charges, that consequently don’t need to be connected to a source of power to work. Today they can be found everywhere, Ramirez writes, in toys, cell phones, and computers. Her explanations of the science are in-depth and sure to appeal to STEM-minded kids like West. In her biographical afterword, the author also points to West’s continuing efforts to draw more people of color into scientific fields—a theme the illustrator underscores by adding colleagues and students with darker skin tones to group scenes.
Unusual in both subject and its gratifying level of technical detail. (author’s note, timeline, information sources) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781536225280
Page Count: 40
Publisher: MIT Kids Press/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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