Accessible, mouth-watering bakes both encourage and instruct emerging bakers.
Fun and practical recipes for both beginning and experienced young bakers.
This comprehensive baking guide offers clear, step-by-step instructions grounded in baking science, many of them accompanied by photographs, to help young people create magic with their stovetops and ovens. Divided into two major sections—“Sweet Recipes” and “Salty Recipes”—the book covers a broad range of types of treats, including cakes, cookies, scones, muffins, pies, and sweet toppings as well as savory breads, crackers, and biscuits. The recipes include some foods from global culinary traditions, like Latin American pupusas, Korean jeon, and Indian naan. The book opens with essential tips, an annotated list of tools and types of pans (with photos), and 10 tips for success, one of which is choosing a recipe of the right difficulty level. The recipes are helpfully labeled “easy” (meringues), “medium” (monkey bread), or “project” (profiteroles). Racially diverse young bakers appear beside the bright photographs of appetizing bakes. Readers will benefit from the informative two-page spreads explaining techniques that are interspersed throughout, such as “Cake Gymnastics,” which shows, in a sequence of five photos, how to remove a cake from a pan. The authors seamlessly integrate scientific tidbits into sidebars, such as one that explains the role of acidic ingredients like vinegar in cake-making or the importance of cold ingredients for flaky pie crusts. The colorful, eye-catching design enhances the reading experience.
Accessible, mouth-watering bakes both encourage and instruct emerging bakers. (index) (Nonfiction. 9-14)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781665930666
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Contentwise, an arbitrary assortment…but sure to draw fans of comics, of science, or of both.
Flash, Batman, and other characters from the DC Comics universe tackle supervillains and STEM-related topics and sometimes, both.
Credited to 20 writers and illustrators in various combinations, the 10 episodes invite readers to tag along as Mera and Aquaman visit oceanic zones from epipelagic to hadalpelagic; Supergirl helps a young scholar pick a science-project topic by taking her on a tour of the solar system; and Swamp Thing lends Poison Ivy a hand to describe how DNA works (later joining Swamp Kid to scuttle a climate-altering scheme by Arcane). In other episodes, various costumed creations explain the ins and outs of diverse large- and small-scale phenomena, including electricity, atomic structure, forensic techniques, 3-D printing, and the lactate threshold. Presumably on the supposition that the characters will be more familiar to readers than the science, the minilectures tend to start from simple basics, but the figures are mostly both redrawn to look more childlike than in the comics and identified only in passing. Drawing styles and page designs differ from chapter to chapter but not enough to interrupt overall visual unity and flow—and the cast is sufficiently diverse to include roles for superheroes (and villains) of color like Cyborg, Kid Flash, and the Latina Green Lantern, Jessica Cruz. Appended lists of websites and science-based YouTube channels, plus instructions for homespun activities related to each episode, point inspired STEM-winders toward further discoveries.
Contentwise, an arbitrary assortment…but sure to draw fans of comics, of science, or of both. (Graphic nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77950-382-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: DC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hot on the heels of the well-received Leonardo da Vinci (2005) comes another agreeably chatty entry in the Giants of Science series. Here the pioneering physicist is revealed as undeniably brilliant, but also cantankerous, mean-spirited, paranoid and possibly depressive. Newton’s youth and annus mirabilis receive respectful treatment, the solitude enforced by family estrangement and then the plague seen as critical to the development of his thoughtful, methodical approach. His subsequent squabbles with the rest of the scientific community—he refrained from publishing one treatise until his rival was dead—further support the image of Newton as a scientific lone wolf. Krull’s colloquial treatment sketches Newton’s advances in clearly understandable terms without bogging the text down with detailed explanations. A final chapter on “His Impact” places him squarely in the pantheon of great thinkers, arguing that both his insistence on the scientific method and his theories of physics have informed all subsequent scientific thought. A bibliography, web site and index round out the volume; the lack of detail on the use of sources is regrettable in an otherwise solid offering for middle-grade students. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-05921-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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