Review: Locomotive

Locomotive by Brian Floca

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is the first in a pile Lu Benke supplied me of 2014 Caldecott hopefuls.

As a history book (well-sourced), I couldn't help but compare it to Yin & Sontpiet's [b:Coolies|997308|Coolies|Yin|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1309203721s/997308.jpg|982801] which did so much to complicate the story of the transcontinental railroad with underlying cruelties and injustices of labor. Locomotive did absolutely none of that. In a day when we have access to so many historical tools and lenses, all this book did was celebrate the ride.

There are so many tools writers have to present complicated visual and text narratives. I was disappointed even though this book used a variety of visual techniques, none of them were used to create various paths for the narrative to take. Floca hinted at the possibility with one small mention of the buffalo and Indians. But with no treatment he let this thread go. You don't have to villify America to call into question the ugliness that accompanied the great achievements. We have to continue to own these difficulties, or else we learn nothing from history. Bolden's [b:Emancipation Proclamation|13591146|Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty|Tonya Bolden|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344718824s/13591146.jpg|19179179] was very good at challenging the mythology without oversimplifying it into villainy.

Otherwise Floca and the editorial team pulled out all the stops--it was a beautiful visual book. Floca's mastery of watercolor is obvious, and he shows this by presenting a variety of different kinds of images in a believable palette. This is why I rated 3 instead of 2. No designer was credited, which is unfortunate, because it makes me think Floca did all that work. This is possible but shouldn't be in question on a book with this high production quality.

The story was clear and the facts and point of view of taking an early ride were interesting enough that I didn't think it was a waste of time--an enjoyable picturebook. But for a work of history to be in contention for Caldecott or Newbery it should do more to provide alternate readings. In fact, the standard of which books should make it into hard cover, full-color process is always a looming question. I don't think 2nd and 3rd rate books should even go to paper printing in our day and age--we should really push on the market so that only the best books get put to paper and all the rest can go to e-devices.



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Review: Jimmy the Joey: The True Story of an Amazing Koala Rescue

Jimmy the Joey: The True Story of an Amazing Koala Rescue by Susan Kelly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a fairly plain rendering of what I might have seen in one of Susan Kelly's films. The standard for a documentary book of an individual animal's life is pretty high by now. Sure, not all books have the production luxuries [b:Moonbird B95|12510885|Moonbird A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95|Phillip M. Hoose|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1359803840s/12510885.jpg|17496628] got, but this one could have been differentiated a bit more to offer some variety in the transaction. The story itself is a compelling rescue drama, so it was an interesting read and held together well as something worth spending time with. The back matter provided context as well as a nice varied list of other resources to look into.



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Review: What's Sprouting in My Trash?: A Book about Composting

What's Sprouting in My Trash?: A Book about Composting by Esther Porter

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The large photos were beautiful and in nice correspondence to the text. The fact that Svetlana Zhurkin (media researcher at Capstone) did this all with stock photos is pretty amazing. Also, the integrated design features for the text boxes made the visual experience even better. The writing for the how-to presentation was clear and concise, but also with a sense there is a personal voice behind it.

Why only 2 stars? For a book like this to be in hard cover, and four-color printing it needs to do support more than one approach to the transaction. This would be a great read-aloud Pre-K-1, but not much for a kid to just sit and read. Because it seems to be designed for a read-aloud only, and because each page has about 20 words on it, the compulsory index in the back is ridiculous.

Overall it's a shame, because as a set of components (by author, media researcher, designer) this should be a good book to read. But when looked at as a whole it just doesn't deliver.



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Review: Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America's First Black Paratroopers

Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America's First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



What made me enjoy this was the 'slice of history' approach. Unlike the Tuskegee Airmen, these soldiers never saw overseas combat duty during WWII. As such, the story doesn't have the Hollywood drama you get with fighter pilots over Italy. But it may be a better story about integration in the military, because the story arc shows how racist decision-making remained a military standard through the end of the war.

The long-form picture book was similar in format and design to [b:Emancipation Proclamation|13591146|Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty|Tonya Bolden|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344718824s/13591146.jpg|19179179] by Tonya Bolden. But this book did not get color printing. All the visuals were b/w photos and the design features were minimal. No designer credit? This was unusual for Candlewick for an obviously expensive book. Clean easy to read design, but no obvious hand of a known graphic designer--maybe their in-house designers really wanted the project? Anyway, high-quality hard cover, paper, and dust jacket were signs Candlewick did put money behind the project.

Editors also spared no expense on the back matter pages (source notes, bibliography, timeline, index), including Stone's special section on her historical research methods! (More books need this feature!!) Stone actually did give staff designer Sherry Fatla an acknowledgement in the end matter with her editors, but did not call her out as the designer. Here's a good interview with Fatla by one of her past authors.

The voice and power in the writing was not as strong as Bolden's in Emancipation. But then, Bolden had dozens if not hundreds of existing secondary sources to try to outdo! Stone claims the ground for the first comprehensive historical research on the 555th. Again, it was a pleasure to see a more obscure slice of history with this kind of author attention paired to the high quality production!



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Review: Pomelo's Opposites

Pomelo's Opposites by Ramona Badescu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was much better than the last concept book I read. The images and text are loaded with unanswered questions and inferences to make. I felt like I had to stop along the way to 'notice and fondle the details' as Eliot Singer used to day, and then decide how these details made a difference to me. Some of the juxtapositions were laugh-out-loud funny, and were in the same post-modern spirit as [b:People|11423979|People|Blexbolex|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1363658140s/11423979.jpg|16357237]. A favorite is the page where the cartoon elephant is faced by a page with a painting of an African elephant--it's still a painting (not a photo), just in a different style and still slightly cartoony! Very interesting talk to be had around these pictures.

I didn't feel like the text answered all the questions about 'why' these things were opposites (at least not on every page). The book supported my open-ended questions.



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Review: I am Blop!

I am Blop! by Hervé Tullet

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



While I was engaged by the variety of concepts and ways of interacting with this simple design, I kept feeling bullied by the text. The text was fully corresponding with what I saw, and telling me how to interpret it. This book has way better potential as a wordless picture book to talk about with young readers as the pages are turned. I wonder what would be a good way to hide the text for a 'read-aloud' that is all kids' repsonses and talk about the visuals.

This would be a much more powerful multi-modal text if the words had been somehow in a counterpoint relationship to the pictures. For example, on the pages where the Blop is suddenly filled with textures of different kinds of animal skins, a question like 'Where is Blop?' would give away none of the answers, but still prompt the same kind of activation of background knowledge. Instead, he simply labeled it "Animal Blop". Boring.

It was too bad, because this book felt a lot like Blexbolex' [b:People|11423979|People|Blexbolex|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1363658140s/11423979.jpg|16357237] visually. But [a:Blexbolex|1256310|Blexbolex|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png] was much better at creating a readerly experience and not just a set of concepts to deliver didactically.



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Review: Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty by Tonya Bolden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I felt like I was watching a good movie, couldn't put the book down. Interestingly, this long-form informational book took me about as long to read as to watch a movie.

Bolden's first-person telling from the black we point of view added a sense of urgency. I enjoyed her decision to problematize Lincoln, presenting him in the context of a. constant pressure by abolitionists and b. seceded states' failure to concede anything in negotiation (sounds familiar given today's congress). It was great to see all the context coming together to make emancipation look to Lincoln more and more like the inevitable conclusion. Arguably it is easier to complicate Lincoln without polarizing people, because he wasn't a slave owner like Jefferson or Washington. It's easier to write him as a conflicted character without villainizing. By contrast, it was this complexity in characterization I felt was missing from Fitzgerald's [b:Children of the Tipi: Life in the Buffalo Days|16293298|Children of the Tipi Life in the Buffalo Days|Michael Oren Fitzgerald|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1379897647s/16293298.jpg|22420863], which I reviewed yesterday.

Bolden's often poetic narrator voice carries the disappointment and eagerness she might have felt inside the movement at the time. She makes no apologies for assuming a personal point of view with a power-based agenda, her quilt frame for patching together all the sources and facts. She presents in quotation the brilliant logic of thinkers like Frederick Douglass who could see the road forward, while not faulting Lincoln for being deliberate and slow and ultimately wrong. (Changing his stance--hmm, don't we call that 'flip-flopping' now?). Many of the quotations she selected sound like they could have been written yesterday. This is probably because so many of them were taken from speeches, and maybe spoken language hasn't changed all that much since the 1800s?

In the end matter a thorough timeline, complete quote sources, and a full two-column page of bibliography all recommend Bolden's careful historical work and the publisher's confidence in this as a book worth spending end paper on (it's an obvious try at an award by Abrams). Also, the entire text is shot through with photos of primary source documents in addition to the engravings and photos. Maria T. Middleton gets a design credit in the front matter. High quality paper, expensive color process, and a fine dust cover all point to a book with a great budget.



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Review: Children of the Tipi: Life in the Buffalo Days

Children of the Tipi: Life in the Buffalo Days by Michael Oren Fitzgerald

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was a deceptively engaging idea on Fitzgerald's part: stitching together a book only of photos and quotations from Native American sources--particularly captivating to look at. But the overall effect of the editing is a normative, redacted view of who the Plains Indians were--an attractive romanticized version.

One of the quotations from Yellowtail let on about this. "You carried a sense of the sacred with you. All of the forms had meaning, even the tipi and the sacred circle of the entire camp. Of course, the life was hard and difficult. And, not all Indians followed the rules."

What he let peek through in that quotation is that a monolithic view of what it meant to be an Indian was often put forward by leaders. They may have needed this kind of unifying rhetoric, but it may not have been shared uniformly by all [i.e., not by all people and not all the time]. More interesting windows on daily life might come not from the prophet, chief, or spokesperson, but from the everyday person who didn't speak in pithy quotes or generalities. Yes, a good number of Fitzgerald's quotations do have this everyday feel to them, and there are plenty of sources out there, including [b:The Middle Five - Indian Boys at School|6870886|The Middle Five - Indian Boys at School|Francis LaFlesche|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348998784s/6870886.jpg|7087018] by [a:Francis LaFlesche|3077708|Francis LaFlesche|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png].



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Review: The Other Colors: An ABC Book

The Other Colors: An ABC Book by Valerie Gates

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I was surprised by this one, ready for it to be a dull take on the compulsory genre.

But Gates and Cutting were witty in both words and visuals (my favorites were the 'razzamatazz' [pink] rattlesnake, and the xanadu xiphosuran!). Gates is a graphic designer and drew strange color names from a career of fiddling around in Illustrator and Photoshop. There's a nice color guide online where you can see not only these, but also find other odd color names by fiddling with the tools: http://colors.findthedata.org/

The alliterating one-line text was engaging largely because of its repetition of the grammatical pattern. This gave each page roughly the same rhythm, give or take a beat. Alliteration was a good choice, because it allowed the alphabet letters to get more air time than they get in the usual one-word label ABC.

This joins a tradition of 'parody' alphabet books, where the didactic standard is used as a post-modern reference for messing around. Wildly different from [b:The Gashlycrumb Tinies|47558|The Gashlycrumb Tinies (The Vinegar Works, #1)|Edward Gorey|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327933644s/47558.jpg|3211551], but in exactly the same playful tradition!

Flaws: They couldn't find anything but 'yellow' for letter Y--not really an 'other' color, is it? Some of the visuals felt more forced, like the U page.



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Review: Shimmer & Splash: The Sparkling World of Sea Life

Shimmer & Splash: The Sparkling World of Sea Life by Jim Arnosky

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



What was interesting about this addition to Arnosky's prolific list of titles was the personal everyday writing. He clearly identified that this was an exploration of sea animals mostly based on wading and rowing in small boats near shore. This made it seem accessible. But there were some inconsistencies. While he started out setting this up as an 'anyone can explore the sea' book, he then spent a few pages on animals I wouldn't get to see without a seagoing boat or other equipment. By self-identifying as a 'naturalist' and sticking with the first person voice, he doesn't have to turn so strongly to expert sources. I like the term naturalist, because it suggests someone with professional skills outside the sciences who turns these skills to the study of nature.

He broke voice for a couple of the spreads, which I didn't like. Just when I was digging his first person voice, he slipped into third person description for an entire animal. Also, he could have pared words like 'suddenly' and 'very'--clear narratives and descriptions don't need these words. There was some clunkiness to the prose due to these kinds of issues.

He included several types of text features. The first person narratives were offset both by paragraph-length captions and small captions and labels. This is good differentiation. But I would be interested in seeing the first person voice in the smaller text features, too, because those are the ones less strong readers are likely to do well with--and then they'd get that dose of voice.

The foldouts were great for expanding the visual experience. The expansive spread of a full-size picturebook is still a main challenge to the ebook market, and this will be true for a few years into the future. There's nothing like a full-color double-page spread with its 11x17 span, and then with foldouts on top of that...forgetaboutit. Until we are living the tech from Minority Report, paper picturebooks are superior to anything on a tablet. Although, once again, if anyone is reading I encourage you to look at what Marvel Comics has done to scaffold the reading of comic books in their iphone and android app.



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Review: Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure by Michael Chabon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



At the beginning this buddy adventure reminded me of Allen Quatermain, and also stories by Kipling. I read Kipling's [b:Life's Handicap|1593457|Life's Handicap|Rudyard Kipling|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348971996s/1593457.jpg|1109958] not long ago, and it was filled with stories that felt like this. But setting it in the peculiar Khazar historical period made it less so an homage to some other author, more Chabon's own. This Jewish history is a fascinating backdrop, filled with speculation and interesting possibilities. Viking bad guys, vengeful elephants, hats! What more could one want in an adventure story? This prompted me to pick up [b:McSweeney's #10|111088|McSweeney's #10|Michael Chabon|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386925789s/111088.jpg|42866], which had an excellent short story by Elmore Leonard!



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Review: Djibouti

Djibouti by Elmore Leonard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I was wanting to dig in and figure out Elmore Leonard's dialog, and it's really tricky in this one. I had a hard time finding the right voices and rhythms for Xavier, who seemed to be one of the vital voices here. I'm trying [b:Tishomingo Blues|147210|Tishomingo Blues|Elmore Leonard|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1172184937s/147210.jpg|2539638] next to see how it goes.

The thing is that without an 'accent' and a real voice in the head, it's difficult to catch onto the ellipsis he relies on so heavily. He tries to portray in writing how people really talk with elisions and omissions of sounds and even whole words, and he writes much of it this way. Unfortunately, he does it mostly by omitting words, not by eliding within words. So the syntax is difficult to figure out until you get an internal voice to go with each character.



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Review: Bluebird

Bluebird by Bob Staake

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Oh, the mean kids! There's that undercurrent through the whole read, and then... Well.



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Review: Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months

Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months by Maurice Sendak

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I can't say how many times I went back to this book over the years. I know I looked at it a lot even when I was a teen, and then when I was in grad school I read it countless times with Bela and the kids out at Dimondale. Sendak and Gorey are close cousins in terms of psychologically compelling illustrations, ones that stand on their own and tell a thoroughly different story than the words alone could do--not only a complementary match, but also with some stark counterpoint to the words.



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Review: Bear Despair

Bear Despair by Gaetan Dorémus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



So I've been wondering what it would be like to 'read aloud' this book just with prosody. To do non-linguistic noises that offer an impression. (I could probably do that with some images in Snowman, too...)

Oh, man! This one was close to a 5. I'll have to wait and see if I keep coming back to it, or if I buy a copy [yes, ten months later I still think it was the best picture book of the year]. The bear gets so mad! I laughed out loud three or four different times, and then again while I had it open to write this.

I'm going to get the rest of the Stories Without Words series from Enchanted Lion Books, even though they're not all by Gaetan Dorémus.



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Review: The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was more of an event than a great book, with all the anticipation of the release built up over the years. Then I entered a pile of contests for an advance copy and didn't win one. So it was quite a build-up. It might have rated a three but was compelling enough in large swathes that I was really into it. Other patches were less so. Between pages 250-450 when he lived in Las Vegas was gripping to me. And this was during the time when it was all character building instead of plot development. Like her other books, Tartt sets up the first half of the book to be super full of character work, and then rolls the camera to unfold the plot in the last half. Well, maybe it's not even halves in this book, but still the same pattern. In both other books, I preferred the character buildup to the plot rollout.

This was 771 pages. So as I often wonder about other people's high ratings I'll confess for mine: It gets a four because I spent two weeks reading it. I'm not sorry, but it's not a five because I won't be buying a copy or rereading it soon.

I thought I was so clever early in the book when I caught myself saying, "Hey, this is just Dickens". Then about two thirds of the way through Tartt actually had Theo and Hobie notice this out loud in the narration. Oh, well. I enjoyed discovering it anyway. Sometimes when she laid down a string of names next to each other in a sentence or paragraph I felt transported into Pickwick or Bleak House. The attorney's name was "Bracegirdle"! Anyway, the ripoff wasn't so distracting that it made me want to quit, like when I noticed JK Rowling was aping Roald Dahl and put the book down. What I'm still not sure about is what Tartt was up to. What was her masterplan for "here's what I'll do with the Dickens structure..."? Or was she just using it because she likes it?

I waited a week to write the review because I wanted to see if I missed Theo or Boris as much as I missed Harriet at the end of Little Friend. Nope, I don't. Upshot: This wasn't as good an experience as [b:The Little Friend|775346|The Little Friend|Donna Tartt|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327936589s/775346.jpg|1808852].

I was disappointed by the self-indulgent monologuing at the end ("You sly dog! You got me monologuing!"). The ending could have and should have wrapped up quickly. I found myself reading the final 35-40 pages more out of duty than the draw of Tartt's narrative wiles. But by thickness alone, at that point in the book 35-40 pages seemed like nothing. I didn't care to hear Theo hold forth about all the things he learned (show me don't tell me!). Also, I was hoping for her to darken Hobie's character up a bit. She laid down the threads for this development when she roped his past to some bad guys, and set him up with a lot of stillness that should belie deep-running waters. But then it all just ended. Maybe she needed another 3-8 years...



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Review: The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



I'm a happy reader. I asked the library to order this a couple months ago and put it on hold for me. So I'm first in line! I picked it up yesterday and haven't been able to sit down to read. But I did look through the front and back matter while we were at the doctor with Pearl (getting a cast on her soccer thumb), and was disappointed because I expected a written apology or at least an explanation for why it took Donna Tartt 11 years to write this book. That's 69.9 pages per year, 5.8 pages per month, 1.3 pages per week, or 1/5 page each day. Hm. A paragraph a day. I could try that.

If I got a chance to interview Donna Tartt, I'd try to get her to confess that she wrote the whole thing in the last two years. Also, has she signed a contract for the next book? And how painfully long is she planning on dragging that one out? Does she sketch out the lines she is going to use to delay her editor? Does she laugh out loud or just inside when she's spending her advance?

It's the most spartan book design I've seen in ages. Nothing on the back jacket flap, very plain design! The same bio we've been seeing on anything Tartt since [b:The Little Friend|775346|The Little Friend|Donna Tartt|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327936589s/775346.jpg|1808852] came out in 2002.



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Review: Real-size Farm Animals

Real-size Farm Animals by Marie Greenwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



So this morning, Alma saw this book as Nancy was putting his coat on. The bus was waiting out front. He leaned over to have a look, and Nancy had to pull him away to take him out to the bus. He got really mad at her. I'll have to leave it out for him this afternoon. It's already a well-loved copy from Poudre Libraries, with a lot of rips from vigorous page turning. Alma will probably help that along a bit...we'll have to read it with a roll of tape.

This is not an Eyewitness book, but uses all the tools we expect from a DK book in that series: The white background providing contrast for original photos. This book also has an original spot illustration for each animal, along with the usual raft of templated text features providing a differentiated reading experience.

The idea of "real-size" animals was fun to see. Greenwood is borrowing from Steve Jenkins' idea, but has used photography instead of illustrations for the life-size animals. The main central photograph is to-scale. On a couple of pages, the pig and the donkey, they used fold-outs to expand the scope of what I could see.



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Review: Ant Colonies

Ant Colonies by Richard Spilsbury

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Powerkids (a subsidiary of Rosen), subcontracted with British book design team Calcium Creative for this series. Calcium contracts with a long list of the series publishers. This seems like an interesting way to do business. They can put their effort into finding good ideas and making the books, or on getting ideas from other companies' editors and pitching them a concept for the series.

The idea behind the six in this series is animals that travel and work in groups--an interesting science concept to follow (ants, chimps, dogs, dolphins and whales, and lion prides are the others in the series).

While specific graphic designers are credited, this book gets more of the template treatment than original design throughout the book. The designers created a style guide and templates and then manipulated this for each spread. Given the stock photos, there is pretty good variety in what I get to see of wolves in color, composition, and content (the photos on the page about marking territory were unfortunately non-specific ;-) ). Again, I'm surprised at how a focused topic can have such depth in the stock photo library to support a whole book.

The text is unremarkable, but does offer three different levels of complexity--captions (10-15 words), small vignettes (35-40 words), and body text (2 simple paragraphs). The vocabulary and sentences are complex enough to allow for some interest to come from the text, but still very bare bones description with little voice.



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Review: Wolf Packs

Wolf Packs by Richard Spilsbury

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Powerkids (a subsidiary of Rosen), subcontracted with British book design team Calcium Creative for this series. Calcium contracts with a long list of the series publishers. This seems like an interesting way to do business. They can put their effort into finding good ideas and making the books, or on getting ideas from other companies' editors and pitching them a concept for the series.

The idea behind the six in this series is animals that travel and work in groups--an interesting science concept to follow (ants, chimps, dogs, dolphins and whales, and lion prides are the others in the series).

While specific graphic designers are credited, this book gets more of the template treatment than original design throughout the book. The designers created a style guide and templates and then manipulated this for each spread. Given the stock photos, there is pretty good variety in what I get to see of wolves in color, composition, and content (the photos on the page about marking territory were unfortunately non-specific ;-) ). Again, I'm surprised at how a focused topic can have such depth in the stock photo library to support a whole book.

The text is unremarkable, but does offer three different levels of complexity--captions (10-15 words), small vignettes (35-40 words), and body text (2 simple paragraphs). The vocabulary and sentences are complex enough to allow for some interest to come from the text, but still very bare bones description with little voice.



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Review: Biggest, Baddest Book of Beasts

Biggest, Baddest Book of Beasts by Anders Hanson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The stars in this series come from Anders Hanson's design. The credit shows him as a designer at Mighty Media, Inc. Did he pitch the series to ABDO, or did they hire his design firm for the editorial team's concept (Liz Salzmann)? We'll see what I can find out.

All stock photos and art, but with unique design work on each double-page spread. A general scheme for color and backgrounds provides a consistent feel not only throughout the book, but over the whole series. With this general rule for the look, Hanson (and Mann? did she work with him on design, or did she write the words?) have done a great job providing a cohesive and interesting visual experience.

The text is informative, but not special. Simple factual sentences are either strung together in small 2-4 sentence paragraphs or stand alone as captions. Diane Craig consulted as a reading specialist, and I wonder if she was in charge of keeping vocabulary and sentence complexity low? If not, what was her role?



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Review: Biggest, Baddest Book of Warriors

Biggest, Baddest Book of Warriors by Anders Hanson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The stars in this series come from Anders Hanson's design. The credit shows him as a designer at Mighty Media, Inc. Did he pitch the series to ABDO, or did they hire his design firm for the editorial team's concept (Liz Salzmann)? We'll see what I can find out.

All stock photos and art, but with unique design work on each double-page spread. A general scheme for color and backgrounds provides a consistent feel not only throughout the book, but over the whole series. With this general rule for the look, Hanson (and Mann? did she work with him on design, or did she write the words?) have done a great job providing a cohesive and interesting visual experience.

The text is informative, but not special. Simple factual sentences are either strung together in small 2-4 sentence paragraphs or stand alone as captions. Diane Craig consulted as a reading specialist, and I wonder if she was in charge of keeping vocabulary and sentence complexity low? If not, what was her role?



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Review: The World in Infographics: the Natural World

The World in Infographics: the Natural World by Jon Richards

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Last summer I went to the Edward Tufte design seminar in Denver, where he discussed design principles as they relate to presenting information and data. Now this is the second book I have seen that uses the infographic style for a whole children's book. While I see some of the most basic techniques developed by Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz, I wonder whether this book would hold up to Tufte's critiques. One of Tufte's ideas is that the information needs to be as clear and simple as possible, and this book really over-uses color and some of the information is more difficult to follow because of the complicated design.

But at the same time, the use of the full page to organize a flow of information in different graphic ways is unusual for children's books, which are usually dominated by a template-like approach to each double-page spread. This book at least owns up to the fact that each double can offer a new kind of visual experience, which is unusual for informational books. Richards and Simkins in this series of four books realize that the nature of the information should determine the layout of the page. Richards worked for DK in the past, so this is an interesting departure from the template-style he must be familiar with from working there.



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Review: Horrible Hauntings: An Augmented Reality Collection of Ghosts and Ghouls

Horrible Hauntings: An Augmented Reality Collection of Ghosts and Ghouls by Shirin Yim Bridges

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Bridges provides a very basic overview of ten specific historical ghost stories. The words begin with a narrative hook, followed by summary of the historical account. Each double has a full-page illustration that seems to be just a blank picture of a setting. But these blank settings are the backdrop for use by a phone app to create an augmented reality. The first one was probably the best, where hovering the app over the book makes a 3-D image of a ghost ship appear.

I haven't seen a lot of Augmented Reality books, but my 8-year-old daughter sometimes plays with the AR on her Nintendo 3DS. The games aren't very well developed, so she doesn't play with them often. I'd like to see more of this.

The technology makes it into an activity book more than an aesthetically experienced piece of art work. It's what the book prompts you to do that creates the experience, more than the book itself.

It looks like Bridges cooperated with a relative to get the app developed. The concept makes it easy to discuss the modern and post-modern. Making a book interact with a smartphone or tablet is a clear use of recent modern technology. But one of the things that happens with the 3-D images in the app, is that they appear to pop off the page. For example, on the Headless Horseman page I can rotate the phone and see the image off the edges of the page. It makes me attend to the frame of the page in new ways, and also to notice what the background image was like before and after the app interacted with it.

This all begs the question of how illustrator Maughan collaborated with Jason Yim in the development of the app and the painting of the illustrations. Do the illustrations have to meet some kind of technical specs so that the app can 'recognize' which animation it is supposed to bring forward? How is this information coded in the illustration? Or did the coders simply use existing illustrations and write code to recognize them?



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Review: Ghost Hunters

Ghost Hunters by Michael Martin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This series book (with 5 titles) provides a basic overview of its title subject. I was worried it would have little beyond the Wikipedia page on Ghost hunting. But there was a good page on electronic voice phenomena (which interestingly, is not featured on the wikipedia page), and the process of setting up a ghost hunt was given in a narrative storytelling voice here where this process is given in plain description online. Andrew Nichols was the consulting expert on the project (his chapter was one of the more interesting in [b:Ghosts, Specters, and Haunted Places|16235502|Ghosts, Specters, and Haunted Places|Michael Pye|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1356073761s/16235502.jpg|22237567]).

One of the interesting things about these books is that 'skeptics' are usually given no face and are thus an impersonal antagonist, easy to dismiss. On the wikipedia page, however, the work of Benjamin Radford is cited directly and explicitly, giving skeptics a face and name. This book leaves them as faceless naysayers.

The photo sources for this series book are interesting, because Svetlana Zhurkin went to multiple news photo outlets instead of stock photos. Two had permissions that led closer to primary sources, including L'Aura Hladik and the Friedrich Jürgenson Foundation.



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Review: Ghosts, Specters, and Haunted Places

Ghosts, Specters, and Haunted Places by Michael Pye

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book grew on me after reading a few chapters. Its awkward formatting as an edited volume made it difficult to get into at the start. Each expert chapter follows a different kind of outline structure, some just using plain text, others using headers, and still others using outline structures. A graphic designer might have helped readers find and see similarities across chapters with a consistent visual approach.

There is wide variety in what counts as an 'expert' here, with some contributors showing little more than reviewing existing accounts of the paranormal while others discuss their own field work in some detail. Overall, the editors made sure the whole text was good at describing what field work might look like, and at challenging popular assumptions and biases about field research.

Author credentials for each contributor are given at the back of the book. These were easier to critique after recently reading [b:When Can You Trust the Experts?|13838227|When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education|Daniel T. Willingham|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1341581469s/13838227.jpg|19472920]. Essentially, each person's presentation boils down to a 'trust me' moment. As an aesthetic experience, some of these moments were more powerful than others, making for an uneven read. Some felt credible and others hokey.

It is interesting to think about paranormal books as informational text, because of how controversial the question of 'reality' is by comparison to the popularity of the topic. It's not like dinosaurs or the Titanic, where a preponderance of tangible material accompanies the wide public interest--the entire topic is based on a body of reports and narratives. Because it is a perennial topic for publishers, it is very interesting to watch the ways authors use thought structures and text formats they borrow from the known informational text genres. In this volume, I feel like I am reading conference proceedings!

Back in the 1800s, authors like [a:Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu|26930|Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1206504583p2/26930.jpg] and [a:Wilkie Collins|4012|Wilkie Collins|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1192222099p2/4012.jpg] were more interested in the narrative and aesthetic value of the paranormal and of dark psychology. Pye and Dalley have ignored the rhetoric that favors the quality of the telling, and instead working to put readers in a frame of mind of scientific or journalistic reading. Just on a reader response level, I'm conflicted about that.



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Review: Robot Competitions

Robot Competitions by Christopher Forest

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was a good overview of robotics competitions, with a fine selection of stock photos. Beyond its wide coverage, the best thing is that Forest's book is full of photos, which take the idea of robots out of the hypothetical and into a clearly present kind of reality. And yet...

I still don't buy that simple remote control machines should count as robots, and that's what more than half of this book is about, so the 'presentness' of robots is misleading in a way. I mean, yes, the wireless remote control is a great invention, but I think there's some kind of presumption that a robot is gathering information through sensors. As one scientist put it, "non-autonomous robots have to spend a lot of time and energy just asking scientists what to do and waiting for the answer." An R/C robot doesn't even gather data and then 'ask questions', it has to rely on a person for its every decision and move.



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Review: Are UFOs Real?

Are UFOs Real? by Michael Portman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was interesting, because the overall tone of the book is to tip readers away from believing in UFOs, while attempting to acknowledge the validity of the question. This is unusual, because I think the approach tends to tip the other way--toward wanting readers to believe. (I can see a new Fox Mulder poster mixed with an Uncle Sam poster: I want you to want to believe!) And it is done with some interesting information, in a very compact book for readers in grades 2-4.

Most of all, I appreciated the fact that Portman was taking a historical approach to why the perennial topics are there and where they came from (how we started saying "flying saucer" or why the "weather balloon" explanation became a thing). The selected photos and art all felt consistent with the approach to the topic as a historical overview. There is no credited media researcher, so I wonder whether Portman was in charge of this himself, or if it was Kate Reynolds (designer) or Therese Shea (editor), or whether they just don't credit other staff at Gareth Stevens the way I'm seeing in books from other publishers.

The last page was really funny! It's a bar graph showing almost 8500 reports of UFOs in the past 4 years out of California. Over twice the number as the next states (New York, Florida, and Texas each have fewer than 4000 in the same time period.) Something about California!



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Review: Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space

Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space by Dominic Walliman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The text offers a basic encyclopedic approach to space topics, with some great information on Big Bang, formation and demise of stars. There are a few on the Sun and Moon, one for each orbit in the Solar System, and a few on the road forward in space exploration. I didn't feel like this was a book wholly about Frontiers of space. But as a basic encyclopedic approach, I enjoyed both the thoroughness and the selection of topics beyond the planets.

Newman's graphic design and illustration are remarkable, and I wonder how the two got together for this book? The artful illustrations are the signature of Flying Eye Books, so I'd like to know whether the project was conceived and designed by illustrator first, who then looked for an astronomer? Or the other way around? Or was it the editorial staff who came up with the idea and found both? I'll ask and see what I can find out.

As a combination, the work of both Walliman and Newman is an engaging 'infographic' sort of approach. With a book like this, I really want to see a visual presentation that competes with the photography-based books. And yes, I was drawn in!




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Review: Super Nature Encyclopedia

Super Nature Encyclopedia by Derek Harvey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Alma couldn't get enough of this book. We checked it out from the library, and I felt bad returning it. I intend to get him a copy for Christmas this year (which is why it gets a 5 instead of a 4). It really is like a full set of DK Eyewitness animal books in concentrate form. They did some things to play with the standard format, like having a variety of design templates instead of just the standard white background that works so well for them.



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Review: The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau

The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I read this on my Kobo in b/w. I actually didn't mind it. The color renders pretty well into grayscale, but I expect the visual experience isn't even close to the same as what I'd get with the picturebook. All indicators in the design and the cover photos point to a colorful 1960s theme. Basic facts about Cousteau's interests and pursuite of the sea beg for more information both in biography and background. Yaccarino does a great job of pointing people to the excellent movies and tv that would help people know why they should care about Cousteau. Unfortunately, the only thing on Netflix is the animated series from 2002.



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Review: Their Skeletons Speak: Kennewick Man and the Paleoamerican World

Their Skeletons Speak: Kennewick Man and the Paleoamerican World by Sally M. Walker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A remarkable book from Lerner. Lerner's history involves a 1959 start with their main imprint which became best known for its photo-based nonfiction series books. This imprint, CarolRhoda, has been around almost just as long (1969) but focuses on individual picturebooks of both nonfiction and fiction, instead of series books. They also own Millbrook since 2004, which has both some interesting series and some great stand-alone books.

The production of this book screamed National Geographic. The organization, voice, and graphic design choices are all familiar from NG--not just NG books, but also magazines. The thoroughness of the reporting in the text was extremely pleasing, and especially the fact that understanding Kennewick Man depends on understanding (or invites understanding) of other PaleoAmerican finds.

One of the strange things about this book was that Doug Owsley is featured regularly in the text in the third person, even though he has credit as one of the main authors. I always find it archaic 'official' style when an author tries to claim this kind of detachment--it's a scientific, pseudo-objective affectation. In a popular nonfiction book, it is not inappropriate anymore for the authors to use the "I" voice.

I remember hearing about this on the news in 1996 and having some of my sciency friends pooh-pooh it because of how many non-Asian human remains had been proven incorrectly dated. I hear a lot about this in the Mormon community, because so many amateur historians and archaeologists want to find some kind of hard proof for Book of Mormon claims. But this story seems to float on its scientific merit without a lot of the other hullaballoo. However, it is nice to see that the land bridge argument is no longer exclusive--it was just about the only theory you could get scientists to talk about up into the 1990s.

While I've read a lot of books with dark themes, the sheer volume of actual skulls and bones in this book and the direct and plain discussions of death, burials, controversy over Native American ownership, and other content gave this a truly dark feel for me and not just the 'shock' of some other titles ([b:Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature's Undead|13773362|Zombie Makers True Stories of Nature's Undead|Rebecca L. Johnson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1338690997s/13773362.jpg|19407094]).



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Review: The Kids' Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up

The Kids' Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up by Stacy Tornio

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



So it seems almost wrong to call this kind of text 'informational' because the only thing it informs you of is what you could do. It's a bucket list. I really enjoyed it, because it was just about the simple stuff anyone can do when they're walking around outside. While some of the items are geographically specific, and others take special equipment I felt like the lion's share were doable anywhere. Turn over a big rock. Watch bats at sunset. Other ideas just take a little education. Letterboxing is a lot like geocaching but without the need for GPS. Mushrooming could end badly.

I'm going to get a copy of this for the family (Lu got it for me from the library. It will be great to help us all find some things to do outside the house!

Riordan's spot illustrations added a friendly decorative tone to the book, likely to be attractive to parents (they have that feel of modern home decor from Target).

This book credits two different designers, one for text design and another for layout. There's a lot of color-coding used in the text to structure it, and plenty of layout work separating various text features and placing the illustrations and text. Maggie Peterson, layout editor, most likely had to work closely with Riordan, because her layouts would have determined the need for specific illustrations.



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Review: What Will Hatch?

What Will Hatch? by Jennifer Ward

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Ward's sense of rhythm for this rhyming text was pretty good. I didn't need it to rhyme, but not having it be that same sing-songy cadence showed some skill and control on her part.

The painted-on-wood illustrations were beautiful to look at with the texture showing through, and Ghahremani's design sense. She actually gets the design credit for the book in the front matter.

The cutouts were fun, but not as meaningful as in some other books, so I would say Ghahremani just wanted to try it. In a book like [b:Night Light|16043631|Night Light|Nicholas Blechman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358266283s/16043631.jpg|21820890] each cutout was central to what I needed to pay attention to and comprehend. Playful features like cutouts or pop-ups shouldn't be there just because we can.

I was so hoping to see her use 'taglion' and 'aerus' in this book, but no dice ;(



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Review: What Will Hatch?

What Will Hatch? by Jennifer Ward

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Ward's sense of rhythm for this rhyming text was pretty good. I didn't need it to rhyme, but not having it be that same sing-songy cadence showed some skill and control on her part.

The painted-on-wood illustrations were beautiful to look at with the texture showing through, and Ghahremani's design sense. She actually gets the design credit for the book in the front matter.

The cutouts were fun, but not as meaningful as in some other books, so I would say Ghahremani just wanted to try it. In a book like [b:Night Light|16043631|Night Light|Nicholas Blechman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358266283s/16043631.jpg|21820890] each cutout was central to what I needed to pay attention to and comprehend. Playful features like cutouts or pop-ups shouldn't be there just because we can.



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Review: Amazing Military Robots

Amazing Military Robots by Sean Price

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Third book in this series for me. This one was disappointing, because most of the 'robots' weren't really robots. They were just remote-controlled machines. Price gives an inclusive definition of robots on page 7, but I think most of us expect a robot to act based on its programming, not just R/C. I guess TV tipped things this direction when the Robot Wars shows were just R/C machines (one of the books in the series is about this). I don't know--what does 'robot' mean to you?

Now that I think about it, this is a good critique of a lot of the technology featured in the 5-book series. The word 'robot' is just an attractive device that the series doesn't follow through on very well.

Once again, good use of stock photography to put a whole book together with the various topics. Each photo was completely relevant, and it is still interesting to me that this is possible.

Lu, what is it your friend said about the current stock photography business that makes it hard for photographers to make a living?



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Review: Balloon Trees

Balloon Trees by Danna Smith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This kind of 'how things are made' book always reminds me of Picture-Picture on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Which made me immediately think that this book is probably already covered by youtube videos. It is, but you have to watch two separate videos to get both the harvesting of latex and the manufacture of balloons. I didn't get much value added out of the rhyming text and the illustrations. Duplicating discovery channel videos doesn't seem like a good use of a hard-copy four-color picturebook. I did like Laurie Klein's visual device of the bird on every page, giving each stage of the process a presence and a personal 'hook' to follow.



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Review: Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature's Undead

Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature's Undead by Rebecca L. Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I remember hearing about these kinds of parasites on NPR a couple of years ago, ones that infect mice so they don't flee from predators and thus get eaten easily(the parasite then spreads through the predator). T. Gondii is featured on p. 39 of this book.

It's a great topic for a kids' book, because it's powerful and interesting science, but unlikely to be textbook science material and it's not one of the perennial topics like dinosaurs. Using the current mania for zombies was a good move by Rebecca Johnson to package the topic.

Bibliography and source notes are very good!

The thing that pushes this beyond the normal shock value is that every featured parasite is accompanied by "The Science Behind the Story" where Johnson discusses the work of specific scientists who have studied each parasite. I'll have to send a copy to Nancy's dad, Dick Heckmann, who is a parasitologist at Brigham Young!



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Review: A Place for Turtles

A Place for Turtles by Melissa Stewart

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is the third 2013 title I've read by Melissa Stewart. She seems to be a prolific powerhouse in the informational book field these past few years. Unfortunately, she is also signing on as a disciple of the Common Core...

I haven't seen as much problem-solution thought structure in informational books as I would like, so it was good to read Stewart's simple, straightforward problem-solution sentences and sidebars.

Her solutions were more interesting when they were positive, giving people something they should do instead of telling them what not to do. There were only three negatives, and the writing would have been better if it had stayed consistent.

Instead of "when people stop using plastic bags" the sentence could have used her suggestion from the sidebar "when people take reusable bags with them to the store". Instead of "when lawmakers stop people from hunting" it would be more appropriate to discuss wildlife management techniques that allow permit-based hunting and conservation (prohibiting hunting completely usually only leads to poaching, and a black market). Instead of "when people stop collecting turtles" encourage people to collect via photography, which has been a great solution for many endangered species.



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Review: A Place for Turtles

A Place for Turtles by Melissa Stewart

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is the third 2013 title I've read by Melissa Stewart. She seems to be a prolific powerhouse in the informational book field these past few years.

I haven't seen as much problem-solution thought structure in informational books as I would like, so it was good to read Stewart's simple, straightforward problem-solution sentences and sidebars.

Her solutions were more interesting when they were positive, giving people something they should do instead of telling them what not to do. There were only three negatives, and the writing would have been better if it had stayed consistent.

Instead of "when people stop using plastic bags" the sentence could have used her suggestion from the sidebar "when people take reusable bags with them to the store". Instead of "when lawmakers stop people from hunting" it would be more appropriate to discuss wildlife management techniques that allow permit-based hunting and conservation (prohibiting hunting completely usually only leads to poaching, and a black market). Instead of "when people stop collecting turtles" encourage people to collect via photography, which has been a great solution for many endangered species.



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Review: Capybaras

Capybaras by Rachel Lynette

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The capybaras must have gotten a new agent. There were three books on them by different publishers in just the past year. This same publisher put one out in 2010 ([b:Capybara: The World's Largest Rodent|8164926|Capybara The World's Largest Rodent|Natalie Lunis|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348665574s/8164926.jpg|13010429]). It makes me wonder if there isn't a really strong set of stock photos available for this category that wasn't available before?

As the largest rodent, and one of the unique animals of South America, it deserves a place among the perennial topic books. Searching the title word in amazon.com or goodreads.com it looks like there's a new book by someone every five years or so. While this doesn't give it the publishing power of a topic like dinosaurs or the Titanic, it is a strange and interesting topic for the informational series to come back to. You never see an out and out picture book on this topic with a separate illustrator or photographer. Molly Bang, where are ye?

So the wide range of stock photos was really impressive. The designers had a lot to work with and put together a full set of standard descriptive categories for an animal, and Rachel Lyynette consulted with a PhD at New Mexico State on the science content. The spare writing doesn't leave room for any art beyond conciseness. A lot of basic answers to what and where questions, but not much for anyone with how and why questions. And there are some pretty good ones: Why is this rodent so huge when others are so small? Why did this one giant survive past ages when so many others went extinct? If its habitat extends into Panama, why isn't it in Central America or North America?



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Review: Henry and the Cannons: An Extraordinary True Story of the American Revolution

Henry and the Cannons: An Extraordinary True Story of the American Revolution by Don Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The Henry Knox history is great material. I realize I probably knew it before, but was reintroduced to it in [b:Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales|13591161|Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales One Dead Spy|Nathan Hale|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1343090433s/13591161.jpg|19179194]. I was excited when I saw this title in the stack Lu borrowed for me.

Don Brown made a good complementary visual story. There are individual pictures and double-page spreads that tell their own mini-narrative, and the entire set of pictures could tell a mostly cohesive story without the words. Brown uses a variety of graphic-novel conventions and structures to help set up the visual story (see [b:Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art|102920|Understanding Comics The Invisible Art|Scott McCloud|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328408101s/102920.jpg|2415847]). One of my favorites was the three-panel showing him leave Boston for Ticonderoga, with the left panel showing the back of his horse in clear weather, the middle panel showing the middle of the horse in reain, and the head of the horse in the right-hand panel in snow. Brown's sketchy figure drawings keep the feel of the charcoal or pencil medium, with a basic palette of watercolors for coloring. I enjoyed looking at it.

I was less impressed with the text, which felt wooden and disjointed like the old basal readers. I don't know if it's Brown's perception of child readers or his editors, but I always found this kind of writing condescending as a child and even more so now--and it's almost painful to read this kind of text out loud to a group. He did intersperse a few direct quotes from Knox's own words, and included a bibliography, but otherwise little direction on where he got his history or where his sources for the quotations are.



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Review: Ocean Counting

Ocean Counting by Janet Lawler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The great story here is that my son Alma is all over this book. He doesn't gravitate to every animal book I bring around, but this one he grabbed right onto with a couple of others and took it up to his room and arranged it in a little display on the floor. He creates a kind of 'desktop' display where he can sit down and have several books and/or toys right in front of him like a little panel. Then he moves back and forth between the books and specific pages in the books to arrange a visual experience for himself. Part of this is very repetitive and probably meets the needs of his autistic thinking, but another part of it seems to be exploratory play.

For this book, he wants someone to read it with him as well, and he especially likes to go from page to page and hear us count. He also is very into the counting infographic at the back (which is very well done), where each of the animals in its quantity sits inside a graphic stripe next to the numeral (i.e., number "3" followed by three pictures of the parrotfish). He wants to point to each line in the infographic and have me read the numeral for him and say the name of the animal. He's both curious about animals, and curious about the interaction around this kind of book--very fun!

This is a good genre-busting book. Usually this would be called a 'concept book' because it focuses on numbers and counting (or with other books it would be the alphabet, a specific feeling, a category of objects). But the National Geographic style provides Lawler with an excuse for both an informational visual experience and a text that goes into basic descriptive characteristics of the animal. She also adds a 'did you know' text box with one additional fact. So it's right there on the border with informational text, using some of the conventions we expect from more involved books.

Lawler was able to collaborate with a specific photographer instead of the stock photos we might expect--she thanks National Geographic for this on her home page. I doubt the photos were shot for this book specifically, but rather that Brian Skerry used a library of his existing work to match up with Lawler's idea for the project. Lawler most likely had to collaborate with him in advance so she would know what the photos were of, and could write the right text. It will be interesting to see if I can find out!



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Review: The Worst Wildfires of All Time

The Worst Wildfires of All Time by Suzanne Garbe

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This title is from the same Edge imprint of Capstone that made [b:This or That Animal Debate|14352457|This or That Animal Debate A Rip-Roaring Game of Either/Or Questions|Joan Axelrod-Contrada|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1355894635s/14352457.jpg|19994386] and [b:Awesome Space Robots|16251001|Awesome Space Robots|Michael O'Hearn|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1366561344s/16251001.jpg|22292567]. The book series is called Epic Disasters, and there are seven other titles: Avalances, Earthquakes, Floods, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Tsunamis, and Volcanic Eruptions. A walk through ten historical wildfires from around the world gives basic facts on how destructive each fire was in terms of land burned, people killed, and homes destroyed.

Unfortunately, the entire book depends on a clear understanding of square acres (hectares), or even square miles. This is the kind of measurement and scale issue where you can experience the 'wow' factor just by hearing the word 'millions' used repeatedly. But still, designers can use infographics to help readers relate to these kinds of gigantic numbers. Just knowing, for example, how many cars I could park inside an acre, and then scaling that out to the acres in the wildfire would give a sense of scale--most everyone knows how big a car is and how many cars they see in a parking lot. But most people don't have a visual reference for ten acres, let alone a million.

The text offers ideas on basic management and thinking about wildfires, but not much beyond this. The stock photos provide a topical backdrop, but there is nothing to suggest the images are even from the fire featured on the page (we know the ones from the 19th century aren't). The media researcher, Marcie Spence, got the best stock photos she could for each topic, and these may be corresponding or they may not. Of the images from the AP, one gets a sub-credit to the Alaska Fire Service, so we know that one is right on. There must be far more topical stock photography than I'm aware of to be able to research that specifically.



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Review: Kids' Baking: Over 60 Delicious Recipes for Children to Make

Kids' Baking: Over 60 Delicious Recipes for Children to Make by Sara Lewis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



So while this book had some of the features I hoped for in [b:Cooking Is Cool|16057093|Cooking Is Cool Heat-Free Recipes for Kids to Cook|Marianne E. Dambra|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367340201s/16057093.jpg|21843003], such as lots of pictures of kids in the process of making the specific recipes, it was a pretty generic book of cookies and cakes. Cooking is Cool had the whole idea of 'no oven needed' to separate it as a different kind of book, and it really seemed like almost every one of the recipes could be handled by kids without an adult intervening. Anytime the oven is involved, there's a need for hands-on as the adult. Which is fine. Lewis clearly notes how cooking together is one of the big ideas behind a kids' book. The recipes are clearly marked to show which ones might work best for new cooks, which would be a good way to identify which ones a kid might try alone, too.



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Review: Cooking Is Cool: Heat-Free Recipes for Kids to Cook

Cooking Is Cool: Heat-Free Recipes for Kids to Cook by Marianne E. Dambra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I rate this book highly at my own peril. This book is full of recipes Pearl will want to make right now, so I may be reviewing myself into a busy weekend. The fact that they all take no cooking takes some of the difficulty out of the recipes and some of the fuss of supervision. Pearl is already an independent chef in the house, so I shouldn't be worried.

Dambra includes mostly snacky have-fun kinds of food, even though some could serve as a meal. There is a little text box with each recipe including an extension activity and connecting the recipe to a children's book. The book connection was a great idea, but Dambra only pulled off a substantial connection about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time the connections felt like token free-associations.

The photographs were great. Four introduction photos show kids handling the food--including knives (awesome)! I might have rated this a five if each recipe had pictures of kids making it, or more process. All the photos through the body of the book are finished products (which is normal for a recipe book, but for a kids' activity book, I'd like to see a little process). Jeff Lange gets photographer credit on the copyright page, but not a title credit. I wonder if he's staff photographer for Redleaf or a hired camera. Photographers have told me that food photography is difficult, and as I understand it most magazine advertisements and article photos include plenty of styrofoam and other fake stuff that holds up well under hot lights. All of these photos are really good-looking, but I'm convinced these are photos of the real food and not styrofoam mockups. Any help from the author or photographer on this question?



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Review: To the Top of Mount Everest

To the Top of Mount Everest by Valerie Bodden

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This review is for the PDF ebook. I checked it out from the library and was shocked it wasn't available in epub or kindle format. The PDF format is truly annoying to read, because the size of print at 100% is too small to read, so I had to jack it up to 150% and then I had to move the text all around the page to see it in the two-column format used on some pages, and to see the images. I was lucky I was reading it on my Kobo Aura with a touch screen, so I could manipulate the pages pretty easily. On my old Kindle with the keyboard and arrow pad I would have just given up.

The B/W photo images rendered pretty good on my Kobo, and all indicators are that this was a top quality print book. Bodden's text is engaging to read, and interspersed with primary sources from the 1953 expeditioners' journals.

I'm not sure what this book tells us about the first ascent that we wouldn't get in almost any other book. It's competing with Steve Jenkins' 2002 book [b:The Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest|1093589|The Top of the World Climbing Mount Everest|Steve Jenkins|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348582242s/1093589.jpg|1080405], and others. I expect a book like this to offer a new take on the existing information. The presence of the primary sources (not scans, but transcriptions) begs for some interpretation of the event. This a-theoretical, no-stance approach has been done before, and for a high-quality print production I expected more.

The photo credits are all there is for sourcing in the book. A timeline, short extension bibliography, glossary, and index are all there is for back matter. I expected Bodden to at least tell where she got the journal entries, even if from a secondary source... It would be disappointing if she hadn't seen at least facsimiles of the original journals.



View all my reviews

Review: To the Top of Mount Everest

To the Top of Mount Everest by Valerie Bodden

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This review is for the PDF ebook. I checked it out from the library and was shocked it wasn't available in epub or kindle format. The PDF format is truly annoying to read, because the size of print at 100% is too small to read, so I had to jack it up to 150% and then I had to move the text all around the page to see it in the two-column format used on some pages, and to see the images. I was lucky I was reading it on my Kobo Aura with a touch screen, so I could manipulate the pages pretty easily. On my old Kindle with the keyboard and arrow pad I would have just given up.

The B/W images rendered pretty good on my Kobo, and all indicators are that this was a top quality print book. Bodden's text is engaging to read, and interspersed with primary sources from the 1953 expeditioners' journals.

I'm not sure what this book tells us about the first ascent that we wouldn't get in almost any other book. It's competing with Steve Jenkins' 2002 book [b:The Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest|1093589|The Top of the World Climbing Mount Everest|Steve Jenkins|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348582242s/1093589.jpg|1080405], and others. I expect a book like this to offer a new take on the existing information. The presence of the primary sources (not scans, but transcriptions) begs for some interpretation of the event. This a-theoretical, no-stance approach has been done before, and for a high-quality print production I expected more.

The photo credits are all there is for sourcing in the book. A select bibliography, a glossary, and an index are all there is for back matter. I really expected her to at least tell where she got the journal entries, even if from a secondary source... It would be disappointing if she hadn't seen at least facsimiles of the original journals.



View all my reviews

Review: To the Top of Mount Everest

To the Top of Mount Everest by Valerie Bodden

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This review is for the PDF ebook. I checked it out from the library and was shocked it wasn't available in epub or kindle format. The PDF format is truly annoying to read, because the size of print at 100% is too small to read, so I had to jack it up to 150% and then I had to move the text all around the page to see it in the two-column format used on some pages, and to see the images. I was lucky I was reading it on my Kobo Aura with a touch screen, so I could manipulate the pages pretty easily. On my old Kindle with the keyboard and arrow pad I would have just given up.

The B/W images rendered pretty good on my Kobo, and all indicators are that this was a top quality print book. Bodden's text is engaging to read, and interspersed with primary sources from the 1953 expeditioners' journals.

I'm not sure what this book tells us about the first ascent that we wouldn't get in almost any other book. It's competing with Steve Jenkins' 2002 book [b:The Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest|1093589|The Top of the World Climbing Mount Everest|Steve Jenkins|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348582242s/1093589.jpg|1080405], and others. I expect a book like this to offer a new take on the existing information. The presence of the primary sources (not scans, but transcriptions) begs for some interpretation of the event. This a-theoretical, no-stance approach has been done before, and for a high-quality print production I expected more.



View all my reviews