Accurate, informative, and surprisingly enjoyable.
A picture-book history of human anatomy and physiology for a young age group—can anyone breathe life into this challenging concept?
Colorful cartoonlike illustrations combine with brief text to provide a history of misunderstandings of human anatomy and physiology that often served to misdirect medical care in the past. The refrain, “Boy, were they wrong!” concludes many spreads. Some of the themes explored: ancient Egyptians’ belief that the heart was the site of the personality; the commonly held misconception that many illnesses could be cured by bloodletting; acupuncture, which is later revealed as one of the “ancient ideas that work”; the idea that eyes produced light that captured images; and the belief that four types of humors filled the body and their imbalance was the source of illness. Each of these is described in a sentence or two and accompanied by a humorous, never-gory illustration, juxtaposed against a follow-on double-page spread that explains, very simply, the actual way the body works. The final few pages explore recent ideas and technologies, including information about DNA and a description of some unnamed imaging techniques. The fourth in the series, this clever entry is just as amusing and informative as the rest. A timeline that lists numerous highly significant medical advances, also—whimsically?—includes the 1921 invention of the Band-Aid.
Accurate, informative, and surprisingly enjoyable. (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3792-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd.
This British import is an imaginatively constructed sequence of images that show a white boy examining a city pavement, clearly in London, and the sights he would see if he were able to travel down to the Earth’s core and then back again to the surface.
The geologic layers are depicted in 10 vertical spreads that require a 90-degree turn to be read and include endpapers, which open out, concertina fashion, to show the interior of the Earth to its core. Beneath the urban setting are drains, pipes, and artifacts of urban infrastructure. Below that, archaeological relics are revealed. An Underground train speeds by, and below it, a stalactite-encrusted cave yawns. Deep below the Earth’s crust, magma, the Earth’s mantle, and the inner core are shown. Turn the page to start going up again, back through the mantle to the crust, where precious minerals are revealed, then fossils, tree roots, and animal burrows, ending with the same boy in the English countryside. The painted, stenciled, and collaged illustrations are full-bleed, and the tones graduate pleasantly from light colors at the surface of the Earth to rich pinks, yellows, and oranges as readers near the Earth’s core. The text is informative, if lacking in poetry, including such nuggets as “earthworms are expert recyclers, eating dead plants in the soil.”
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68297-136-9
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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