Review: Bones Never Lie: How Forensics Helps Solve History's Mysteries

Bones Never Lie: How Forensics Helps Solve History's Mysteries by Elizabeth MacLeod

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Focusing solely on heads of state (mostly royalty), Macleod's book should have been titled to match the fact. The existing title would be more apropos of a series.

Text vignettes discussing forensic techniques sometimes did not match the case being discussed in the chapter and made it feel disjointed. And repetitive spot illustrations of a chemist's beaker, an x-ray sheet, a magnifying glass, and a microscope were distracting because they also did not match what was going on on the page. As icons, they should have been used when they were being discussed in the forensics being used to solve the case. A few things like this made me think the book was put together hastily--Kathy Lowinger is credited as editor, and Sheryl Shapiro as designer. No one was given credit as a separate editor for visuals. But the text was well written, and enjoyed being led by Macleod through each of the ideas for each case.

The most interesting was the case of Thai king Rama VIII, which is still unsolved. I always wondered why no one was allowed to talk in public about the royal family, and it sounds like the main reason is to avoid public speculation about the death and the likely conspiracy behind it. Three men executed in 1955 were bizarrely convicted after two had been acquitted. They were freed after the first trial, but then found guilty after the third appealed his guilty verdict (which re-opened the case for all three, I guess). The reason it was an interesting study in forensics is because the scene was so badly compromised before police could investigate that tons of evidence was either unreliable or completely missing. This allowed Macleod to discuss what the police needed and why it was unavailable.



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Review: Spring Blossoms

Spring Blossoms by Carole Gerber

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I enjoyed Evans' lino-cut illustrations a lot (they brought the book up from a 2 to a 3). This is a pile of meticulous work, and block printing (even though it's printing) can be much more involved and time-consuming than painting. So recognizing the technique made me look more closely at the illustrations than I might have otherwise, and to puzzle over exactly what was done with blocks, what was painted on, and what was done digitally. It's really hard to tell what is digital here at all, which is nice and should be expected.

I was less impressed with Gerber's rhyming text. She has a lot of books out in this style, and this is one of three in a seasons series. I just don't find the rhyming text interesting for this material, and was hoping for something more free verse for these illustrations. The text harks back to the old rhyming tradition from the 30s-50s, but doesn't have any power for me. I've also heard it's an immediate turn-off for editors and agents looking at new material.

Authors invariably paint themselves into a corner by needing to rhyme the text in a picturebook, and end up needing rhymes that aren't interesting and feel forced: "...beneath its twigs, as we can see...that grow new cones high on the tree." The 'as we can see' is a filler rhyme, and 'tree' is a far less interesting word than many of the others she worked with in the rhymes.



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Review: Mysteries of the Unexplained

Mysteries of the Unexplained by Reader's Digest Association

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



My brother Eric (yes, Eric Erekson) had a book like this when we were kids. He got it for Christmas one year, and I think I must have read it cover to cover a dozen times. I found this one at Nancy's house not long after we were married, and Karen finally gave it to me in 1993 after seeing me read it so much. It's like an encyclopedia of paranormal events, written in a kind of reportage style. Each text chunk stands on its own, so you can read as little as a fifty-word item about a horned lizard found in a block of stone, or as much as the full-page two-column ghost story of Major Stewardt of Ballechin House.

I know my reviews don't usually tip toward the educational application of books (I prefer to focus on my aesthetic experience), but this is the kind of book needed badly for readers striving to make gains as readers between grades 3-8. These brief 'text shots' are highly engaging and motivating, can stand up to multiple re-readings, but without avoiding difficult vocabulary. Kids who need a breakthrough can 'piece' their way through a small text like this without getting frustrated, and re-readings only increase their confidence and competence.

Also, Lu Benke and I have had several conversations about how these books are cataloged in libraries as non-fiction, and how the writers generally tend to use all the sourcing and text features (index, bibliography, dates, names) we would expect of a journalistic work. The book's intent is to inform--to gather and present reports of incidents as they appeared in historical source material. For many of the items, relevant photos add to this informational tone. These are key rhetorical moves, and when found in bulk in a huge volume like this the effect is to say "these things are real". The book makes no pretense of being science or historiography, but its format is that of a 'fact book'. This, despite the editors' note at the beginning disclaiming it as a simple compendium of reports for which the scientific community has no answers. This is a genre usually gaining wide circulation among young readers, but mostly unaccounted for in discussions of children's book genres.



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Review: Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard

Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard by Annette LeBlanc Cate

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Cate's birding book breaks one of the cardinal rules (sorry I couldn't resist) of informational books: Anthropomorphism. But in this case, she is right and the rule is wrong. That's the thing with trying to come up with tight criteria for selecting informational books. When we focus too tightly on one kind of presentation, we get myopic. This book is not intended to be a scientist's science presentation. It's about being an everyday person getting into birding, and the talking birds are appropriate. The purpose of the book guides the criteria.

I enjoyed Cate's sassy cartoon birds. It's not exactly the same, but the style and tone reminded me of Jared Lee's "Bummers" cartoons from Scholastic's 1974-1992 Dynamite Magazine. The intent is not to make kids think animals have human thoughts and emotions, it's intended to add some jokes to the really basic information on birding.

The best aspect of this book is its depth in both content and graphic formats. It really is a comprehensive guide to amateur birding. The wheel diagram for shades of brown, the rainbow diagram for spectrum of colors of birds, the bubble diagram for taxonomy--it was a brilliant array of appropriate variety in graphic organizers. Several different kinds of comic strips are used throughout, and a large two-page 'fashion runway' was an ingenious way to show off the differences in sparrows. Cate attacks the 'boringness' of the content head-on, and challenges readers to just start looking and drawing.

It was a tough book to read in one sitting, and I imagine it being best read over some time--a week or two to look closely at each few pages. Cate promotes a field guide over her book for actually getting out observing and differentiating birds. It reminded me of our days in Gunnison, when we kept [b:A Field Guide to Western Birds|592023|A Field Guide to Western Birds A Completely New Guide to Field Marks of All Species Found in North America West of the 100th Meridian and North of Mexico|Roger Tory Peterson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347610258s/592023.jpg|1334525] next to the kitchen window that looked out onto our lilacs. We saw dozens of different kinds of birds there every spring and summer, and we'd put a date next to each bird when we saw it. I haven't been able to find that guide book since we moved down from the mountains six years ago...



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Review: Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard

Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard by Annette LeBlanc Cate

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Cate's birding book breaks one of the cardinal rules (sorry I couldn't resist) of informational books: Anthropomorphism. But in this case, she is right and the rule is wrong. That's the thing with trying to come up with tight criteria for selecting informational books. When we focus too tightly on one kind of presentation, we get myopic. This book is not intended to be a scientist's science presentation. It's about being an everyday person getting into birding, and the talking birds are appropriate. The purpose of the book guides the criteria.

I enjoyed Cate's sassy cartoon birds. It's not exactly the same, but the style and tone reminded me of Jared Lee's "Bummers" cartoons from Scholastic's 1974-1992 Dynamite Magazine. The intent is not to make kids think animals have human thoughts and emotions, it's intended to add some jokes to the really basic information on birding.

The best aspect of this book is its depth in both content and graphic formats. It really is a comprehensive guide to amateur birding. The wheel diagram for shades of brown, the rainbow diagram for spectrum of colors of birds, the bubble diagram for taxonomy--it was a brilliant array of appropriate variety in graphic organizers. Several different kinds of comic strips are used throughout, and a large two-page 'fashion runway' was an ingenious way to show off the differences in sparrows. Cate attacks the 'boringness' of the content head-on, and challenges readers to just start looking and drawing.

It was a tough book to read in one sitting, and I imagine it being best read over some time--a week or two to look closely at each few pages. Cate promotes a field guide over her book for actually getting out observing and differentiating birds. It reminded me of our days in Gunnison, when we kept [b:A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America|155840|A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America|Roger Tory Peterson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1172260544s/155840.jpg|150377] next to the kitchen window that looked out onto our lilacs. We saw dozens of different kinds of birds there every spring and summer, and we'd put a date next to each bird when we saw it. I haven't been able to find that guide book since we moved down from the mountains six years ago...



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Review: Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard

Look Up!: Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard by Annette LeBlanc Cate

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Cate's birding book breaks one of the cardinal rules (sorry I couldn't resist) of informational books: Anthropomorphism. But in this case, she is right and the rule is wrong. That's the thing with trying to come up with tight criteria for selecting informational books. When we focus too tightly on one kind of presentation, we get myopic. This book is not intended to be a scientist's science presentation. It's about being an everyday person getting into birding, and the talking birds are appropriate. The purpose of the book guides the criteria.

I enjoyed Cate's sassy cartoon birds. It's not exactly the same, but the style and tone reminded me of Jared Lee's "Bummers" cartoons from Scholastic's 1974-1992 Dynamite Magazine. The intent is not to make kids think animals have human thoughts and emotions, it's intended to add some jokes to the really basic information on birding.

The best aspect of this book is its depth in both content and graphic formats. It really is a comprehensive guide to amateur birding. The wheel diagram for shades of brown, the rainbow diagram for spectrum of colors of birds, the bubble diagram for taxonomy--it was a brilliant array of appropriate variety in graphic organizers. Several different kinds of comic strips are used throughout, and a large two-page 'fashion runway' was an ingenious way to show off the differences in sparrows. Cate attacks the 'boringness' of the content head-on, and challenges readers to just start looking and drawing.

It was a tough book to read in one sitting, and I imagine it being best read over some time--a week or two to look closely at each few pages. Cate promotes a field guide over her book for actually getting out observing and differentiating birds. It reminded me of our days in Gunnison, when we kept a Peterson guide right next to the picture window that looked out onto our lilacs. We saw dozens of different kinds of birds there every spring and summer, and we'd put a date next to each bird when we saw it. I haven't been able to find that guide book since we moved down from the mountains six years ago...



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Review: Eight Dolphins of Katrina: A True Tale of Survival

Eight Dolphins of Katrina: A True Tale of Survival by Janet Wyman Coleman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The cover led me to believe this would be a photo-illustrated book. But Yan Nascimbene is such a well-known name that I was surprised to see the incongruous cover photograph and insides illustrated.

I was disappointed by the storyboard. There's not much plot to tell in this story, which is fine. But there was a lot of science and psychology to explore, and Coleman only hinted at this. So the pacing of the story could have been drawn out to help me learn more about these specific dolphins and trainers. Instead the last several pages were given to stand-alone examples of dolphins being clever and helpful--each one on its own page with a full illustration on the facing page. I thought these should have been text-only features all on one page in the back matter, or scattered as vignettes throughout the book.

Nascimbene's illustrations for the 8 Dolphins story did something unique on their own, providing a complementary narrative. They could stand as their own storyboard. But because of the abrupt shift to the examples at the end of the book, he reverted to corresponding illustrations that didn't do much beyond mirroring what was told in the text.



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Review: Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century

Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century by Linda Tarrant-Reid

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A volume of this type and scope is basic Social Studies equipment. The amazing aspect is its comprehensive content. Spanning 400 years of chronological time was remarkable, but the thoroughness of the presentation was staggering. While many of the familiar stories are here, there are dozens and dozens of less known histories of events, movements, and individuals. Individuals are presented in some kind of historical context. So a sub-section dedicated to an individual does not read like an unrelated encyclopedia entry. As a whole, the structure builds toward a holistic presentation of African American history and the contribution of this slice of history to the current state of the nation.

Because the book is based mostly on text, the visuals were important. They are all photos, paintings, diagrams and maps. There is no credited editor in charge of selecting these, so I have to assume Tarrant-Reid did this herself. The permissions alone would have been daunting, so I expect there was an editor who helped.



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Review: Master George's People: George Washington, His Slaves, and His Revolutionary Transformation

Master George's People: George Washington, His Slaves, and His Revolutionary Transformation by Marfe Ferguson Delano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A nice piece of revisionist history, the book deals well with George Washington's conflict-laden story. The myth-making tradition lives on today well past the 19th century effort to bring statesmen like Washington into a pantheon of new American gods, and revisionist history helps me see Washington as a human in his time. While the book keeps Washington front and center, individuals enslaved are featured strongly within the narrative and in full-page text features to the side of the larger narrative.

Delano uses language to describe slavery that carefully avoids diminishing the cruelty of the institution. One of the repeated prhases was "enslaved men and women" as a substitute for the more generic 'slaves', but she does not overdo this to the point of political correctness--just enough to remind me that it's not 'okay'. The psychological difficulty and the gradual transformation of character for Washington is drawn out through quotations from primary sources, so the revisionism is not just wishful thinking. This was an absolutely excellent piece of historiography when compared to [b:George Washington: The Crossing|16130432|George Washington The Crossing|Jack E Levin|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1365327740s/16130432.jpg|21955746].

The text is engaging to read, and paints a clear picture of daily living. Not only is each section of the book meticulously sourced in source notes, but there is also a strong guide to primary sources, books, and articles. The production team gets complete credit, so if one knows what each of these jobs is the making of the book is well documented. Perhaps this is because it's the National Geographic Society and not merely a publishing company under a publishing conglomerate. Designer, editorial staff, production team, and book division leaders are all listed along with Lori Epstein' original photograph credits.



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Review: The Skull in the Rock: How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins

The Skull in the Rock: How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins by Marc Aronson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I don't feel like I've said this in forever, but the best thing about this book is Marc Aronson's writing. (I remembered his name from [b:Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science|434472|Sugar Changed the World A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science|Marc Aronson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348268973s/434472.jpg|423407], also an excellent book.)

This is a great example of a book with thick patches of text that beg to be read. Because the book was published by National Geographic, it fits the style we know from the magazine. Engaging visuals, paired with clear captions, and relevant text nearby. As a browser I was able to choose whether to bask in the visual experience or move into the text. I love it when books are well balanced like this. Usually DK Eyewitness books tip more to the visual, and have just okay writing (while concise and easy to read), and that style seems to have gained some dominance. I prefer this balance, because the text was real storytelling! I was having a powerful aesthetic experience just in the reading, and not because of an efferent lesson I was taking away.

As an informational book, this text focused me not only on the science but rather deeply on being a scientist. Lee Berger's personal investment in his career punctuated the amazing nature of the 2008 find (even more of a bonus for a kids' book, his son Matthew made the initial discovery)! The book tackles double the job of some informational books, yet does both very well. I could stand to read more like this!

The pictures and words are in a complementary relationship. The careful diagrams, photos, and illustrations sometimes tell more story than is there in the text--or tell the same story but more powerfully so. While they do not add bits to the narrative not there in the text, it's hard to argue that something like the reconstructions on p. 42 or p. 50 aren't narratives of their own. All this makes me want to go and get Aronson's recent John Henry book, [b:Ain't Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry|1786934|Ain't Nothing but a Man My Quest to Find the Real John Henry|Scott Reynolds Nelson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320462292s/1786934.jpg|1785833].



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Review: You've Got Spirit!: Cheers, Chants, Tips, and Tricks Every Cheerleader Needs to Know

You've Got Spirit!: Cheers, Chants, Tips, and Tricks Every Cheerleader Needs to Know by Sara Hunt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a clear guidebook for people who have already decided they are interested in cheerleading. Covering topics and terminology not widely known, someone new to the sport could learn quite a bit from the book. The cover alone clearly gives away the market as young girls. Inside, the content does very little to press the issue of gender diversity, beyond having a few images with boys in some squads and showing the pictures of all-male pep squads from the 1800s.

When it gets right down to it, I wanted to hear and see cheer routines as a key part of this book, and print media just doesn't support it. However, the selected photos were right on for each of the topics being covered in text and the dozens of different photo credits at the end belie this kind of effort. It's more obvious when a production team doesn't put this kind of effort into finding just the right photo, so it was nice to be able to identify the effort here.

Because this is a Lerner imprint, it's got the support of their strong web resources, which is great. I think more publishers should be figuring out ways to get readers moving between their book and their online resources. I would suggest some way of integrating a book and an ipod/ipad or smartphone, but i haven't seen much of this (maybe editors don't believe young folks have access to their parents' phones, or have their own?) If Pearl brought home a book with a QR code or some other scannable feature, I would use it.

Finally, a word on the index. Just because Lerner is one of the standards for info text I have to weigh in on this, because it has become an epidemic across all publishers. I know the index is an important text feature to teach kids about, but I absolutely disagree that it is necessary in all informational texts. In most picturebooks the index is a ridiculous atavistic appendage--especially when there's already a table of contents! Responsible scholars such as Kathleen Isaacs insist that ALL informational books should have an index. But it serves a locating function at a micro-detail level, and if the nature of a book's design does not require this kind of location then it is NOT necessary. And if the text is so basic that there is no way to separate micro details from the rest of the structure, then why index it? This is also true for most glossaries. Inline definitions and pronunciation guides are probably more effective, but in a picturebook an unfamiliar vocabulary word should be given help from the illustrations, too! This is a clear example of state content standards creating arbitrary, reified forms that don't follow function.



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Review: Why Did the Whole World Go to War?: And Other Questions About... World War II

Why Did the Whole World Go to War?: And Other Questions About... World War II by Martin W. Sandler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Tricked! This is a basic outline-format book moving from subtopic to subtopic through WWII. The trick is that all the subheaders have been turned into questions--the old SQ3R technique (coincidentally developed during WWII for the military)!

This could be effective, especially if the reader browsed around to find questions that actually sparked an interest. But in general the problem with the book providing the questions is that it takes away the opportunity of the reader to do the active thinking.

Sandler's compact text keeps each subtopic on a single page, so each of the topics is truly modular. The compact treatment keeps any one topic from its potential depth. Some of the topics suffer from this. Sentences like this one about FDR "During the war, he was a great leader" are not helpful.

Bob Barrett was one of Nancy's illustration professors at BYU. His style relies heavily on the overpainted background. There is no white space. Figures and other content are composed on top of this background, which is already a composition and color study in its own right.



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Review: Planet Ark: Preserving Earth's Biodiversity

Planet Ark: Preserving Earth's Biodiversity by Adrienne Mason

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book clearly deals with the 'so what' question. There are multiple human and global impacts of biodiversity that make this a relevant book. The book shifts regularly in and out of basic science fact presentation and into social activism. In the end the book gives a dozen examples of specific people and projects that are activists in local, doable ways.

This book needed complementary illustrations. Each double-page was trying to do so much informational work, and the text had all the heavy lifting. Instead of spending illustrator time and effort on the small vignette pictures with captions, it may have been better to spend time illustrating the concept rather than just providing a mirror of part of the text. An example of this was the pages on pollination. For a highly diverse and complex topic, the bulk of the illustration just shows the cacao tree and the midge that pollinates it. The illustration only cooperates with about a tenth of the text on that page.

In a way, I don't see this as Margo Thompson's problem. She most likely received art direction and followed what the job was. Authors and editors need to take much more responsibility for engineering the relationship between text and pictures in storyboarding. Artists could certainly understand this kind of work, but on most information book projects I expect artists are told what is wanted rather than being asked to create a plan for the relationship of pictures to text.

It's frustrating. This idea of the relationship between text and pictures has been at the forefront of children's literature theory for over twenty years now, but I still feel like the bulk of children's books show no effort expended on this vital concept.



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Review: Healing Days: A Guide for Kids Who Have Experienced Trauma

Healing Days: A Guide for Kids Who Have Experienced Trauma by Susan Farber Straus

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was one of the first self-help books I've been able to review, and it branches out into the social sciences (beyond conventional Social Studies disciplines). Because it is about working with traumatic events, tone makes a big difference. I thought Straus did a good job of using very plain language without sounding condescending. Bogade's illustrations kept the tone from being overly dark, sending a message consistent with the text--that these are kids with the potential to be happy, and that people are mostly good. Resources for adults helping children through trauma are queued up on the publisher's web site.

While Bogade was careful to present equal amounts of gender in her illustrations, the gingham stitched cover border will identify this as a girl book to boys (most likely the work of the designer, not Maria Bogade). The cover should have been more neutral. The illustrations also have a style and tone that identifies this as a pre- through primary grades (K-2) book, which seems to match the text as well.

I did not know the American Psychological Association (APA) had its own children's imprint. Magination press may be a good resource to find more books in this area of informational text!



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Review: Busy Builders

Busy Builders by Roxie Munro

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



From the introduction: "Many species of insects live in...colonies, but few are builders." Each insect and arachnid featured gets two double-page spreads, one for a giant close-up painting of the individual and then a full spread to illustrate what it builds. Some of the paintings were much better than others. The cross-section format of the ant hill was engaging to look at, but the termite hill was lacking in detail or scale to see what actually happens inside. I was surprised by some of the ones I was not familiar with, so the selection was wide enough to be engaging.

With a book like this, I again am wondering 'so what'? There must be interesting studies that are working on the psychology or evolutionary biology of these kinds of builders. If they're so rare, why do they do it? Could a look at a cross section help readers think about these kinds of questions as well as presenting a series of sample animals that build?



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Review: Amazing Eyes Up Close

Amazing Eyes Up Close by Melissa Stewart

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The concept behind this Animal Up Close series is interesting, but it probably gets its best effect if you have each of the books: ears, noses, and tails are the ones featured on the reverse cover.

Because of the fine detail in Stewart's photography, I wished the book had been printed in large format (like Nic Bishop's). Also, because the book is supposed to be about each of these eyes, I thought it was strange how small the 'up close' cutouts of the eye photographs were relative to the page. It would have been fun to have the eye just dominate the page instead of sharing it with white space and text.

Each double-page spread is a stand-alone bit of information, so there is no narrative thread. The photos are in a symmetrical, corresponding relationship to the text. But I wouldn't even think of making a book like this without the photos. They're indispensible as examples of what the text is trying to tell about, and actually more important than the simple text.

Also, because the series focuses uniquely across many animals on just one body feature, it transcends a simple internet search. Stewart had to do not only the photography, but the research for each to put together the book.

I'm left with a 'so what' question. When so many eyes are put together, I feel like I have a book of raw data, not with any kind of informational unity. What is it about eyes that this particular grouping helps us notice or think about?



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Review: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by James Henry Daugherty

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The Roosevelt-era public works mural style is entrancing. These pictures also draw on the much older style of the religious tableau, where many symbolic arrangements of figures and objects combine in a kind of 'editorial' effect. The kind of symbolism used here is part borrowed from the religious tradition, but some of it also reminds me of political cartoon symbolism.

The unaltered treatment of Lincoln's speech is something Daugherty seems to have invented in the picturebook, and is something we have seen plenty of since--most recently [b:I Have a Dream|16029151|I Have a Dream|Martin Luther King Jr.|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1355542306s/16029151.jpg|1618365] by Kadir Nelson. One brilliant visual aspect of this is how aware he was of the effect the gutter would have on the composition of the images and the text blocks. I really enjoyed the slight awkwardness of how the text wrapped across the line, and felt much like how it is when you see text carved into stone and the carvings sometimes awkwardly follow the nature of the stone--getting cramped where there's less space and spreading out too much where it's wide.

One of the nice updates to this reissue of the 1947 classic is the picture interpretation at the end, detailing in words the components of each mural and what they signify (don't know if this was in the original or not). Also, the full text is presented in clear print before the murals begin, and again in a facsimile of a primary source at the end (following Gabor Borritt's afterword). Since Borritt is a professor of Civil War studies, I wish he had included just a little provenance for the facsimile, because if I remember right there are some in Lincoln's holograph and others drafted by someone else.

Daugherty's reverent pageant-like presentation is a little difficult to swallow in today's world, but his particular form of exaggeration seems to dwell less on the sublime and more on the human. That makes it a little more palatable. A share of the glory and drama is spent on all kinds of people: soldiers, workers, farmers, statesmen, explorers, scholars, mothers, children, scientists. It's a brand of populism you don't see so much anymore, a romanticized vision of American pluralism. Patriotic without a lot of flag-waving.



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Review: Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball

Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball by John Coy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Morse's illustrations are mesmerizing. I looked and relooked at the wildly exagerrated figure drawings of the gym class. The crowded compositions ensure overlapping of huge hands, lanky arms and too-long necks, and mustachioed heads. The feeling of chaos told about in the text is told much further and better in the pictures. It's one of the few complementary illustration sets I've read in the past weeks (the complementary relationship to the text is true for many, but not all of the pictures). Morse's style of painting faces is incredible, with a signature overplaying of flesh around eyes that seems to put each figure's emotions at the surface; likewise with his treatment of mouths and teeth. These facial details are so noticeable.

The color scheme was extremely unusual, and the fact the boys were likely wearing gym uniforms made the duotone style feel realistic. The hilarious moment in the illustration is that the setting is in the 1890s, but when James Naismith had a flashback, Morse gave it the 'black and white = the past' treatment (almost--he has plenty of blue and green in these 'b/w' paintings). Great semiotics! I knew exactly what it was doing.

The text is plain and direct and presents the story clearly. The text has little of the tone and emotion in Morse's illustrations. The key skill in the writing here is in the selection of the specific episodes to storyboard the book. I wonder what the process for writing was, and how much Coy used a storyboard to sense the pace of how the page turns would work?

Key moment in the text worth noting: Arranging games for women, and then seeing women's competitive nature come to the surface during the game. It was a great illustration moment to see the young woman with her fist balled up and shaking it in Naismith's face.



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Review: Reading Maps

Reading Maps by Kevin Cunningham

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The tablet and smartphone on the cover led me to believe the book would be mostly about how to use new digital map tools. But it was really a standard overview of technical aspects of cartography, probably mapped directly onto some state content standards for Social Studies. Gads. It would have been cool to have a guide book to all the new and different things you can do with digital cartographic tools.

The book's sole function is lessons on different technical aspects of maps. As such, it doesn't provide much of an aesthetic experience, and the stock photography is corresponding without adding to or enhancing the information. While not all of the information in this book could be found on Wikipedia's "Map" entry, the links are all there. So I don't know why this book needed to be on paper, in four-color, and hard bound. Anyone who wants to know the parts of a map can find it without a book, and I don't know why anyone would seek out a book to answer these easily-searchable questions.

I also find the "A True Book" trademark imprint from Scholastic annoying. Why don't they just say, "Didactic" or "Lesson". Kids like to talk about 'fact books' as a genre, or 'books about real things', so I can see some of the ontology and epistemology Scholastic is trying to play on, but it's misleading. There are some great books out there, such as [b:The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology|25014|The Map That Changed the World William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology|Simon Winchester|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1167571832s/25014.jpg|1413457] that do more to show the the choices and developments of the map as a man-made (hence: fictitious) technology, without trying to package it as "Truth!" (I often like to point out in my literature classes that the etymology of both fact and fiction is the same latin root: facere--to make or do.)



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Review: This or That Survival Debate: A Rip-Roaring Game of Either/Or Questions

This or That Survival Debate: A Rip-Roaring Game of Either/Or Questions by Erik Heinrich

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The old playground game of choosing between two bad outcomes gets a thorough treatment in thirteen pairs of nasty choices. Four stars because I 'really' liked it! I could imagine myself in 4th or 5th grade talking about this kind of thing for hours with my friends. Each short text snippet gave me just enough pros and cons to make both options horrible. This would spur the discussion! I found myself thinking seriously about trying to get away from piranhas, or weighing the probability of poisonous snakes on a deserted island. The stock photos and simple graphic backgrounds present just enough of each situation to create the desired shock value. Fully corresponding relationship between the photos and the text, but with nothing in the photos to carry any of the narrative burden--so a weak corresponding relationship instead of a strong one.

It's hard to call this really an 'informational' book. Children's literature suffers from rigid genre titles this way. But it's definitely the kind of book that would get high circulation in a school library. It has information in it, but the information isn't the central point. It's the discussion, the social aspect of information as something to talk about. Ultimately it's the either/or structure that is the point of this book, and the cover gives this clearly in its subtitle: A rip-roaring game of either/or questions. It's a game book!



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Review: How Do You Burp in Space?: And Other Tips Every Space Tourist Needs to Know

How Do You Burp in Space?: And Other Tips Every Space Tourist Needs to Know by Susan E. Goodman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This reboot of the familiar 'what is it like in space' book distinguishes itself by adding material about the new commercial space flight programs, which makes the 'tourist' point of view more viable. The bulk of the book covers already-known territory, recounting in guide-book format how things like eating, going to the bathroom, and sleeping work for astronauts. Without the material on the new commercial flights, this would be mostly a recycling of information from shuttle- and Apollo-era books on the same topic. The nice thing is that in previous books, the guide-book format only worked if you accepted the idea that you might one day become an astronaut (odds?), but now the idea is that it's only a matter of time and scale to figure out how more people will get this experience.

In the end, I wished this book had been more speculative about the future of space travel for everyday people instead of revisiting just the familiar topics. The ideas of moon resorts and suborbital microgravity experiences is so fun to think about, but still seems so far away and unrealistic. I would have liked to read more on that future.

The cartoon illustrations correspond to the text, and often are drawn over photographs from past space missions to illustrate a point. There is no narrative thread to the illustrated storyboard. Each illustration is a topical stand-alone.



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Review: George Washington: The Crossing

George Washington: The Crossing by Jack E Levin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Jack Levin shows engaging craft as historiographer, interleaving primary sources with his own narrative and with period art. Current maps showing marching paths were a bit confusing to follow, but only because the captions didn't always match the maps well. There is not much here that one can't get in equal detail on Wikipedia, which is not surprising because the American Revolution is a well-structured topic header that will have many serious and fastidious custodians contributing to and policing the pages. Again, the strength of Jack Levin's work is his way of making this into a unified piece of visual/written work, and this separates it from what I could find online. For a patriotic retelling, with some of the complications, historiographic arguments, and uncertainties woven in, I prefer Nathan Hale's graphic novel [b:Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy|13591161|Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales One Dead Spy|Nathan Hale|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1343090433s/13591161.jpg|19179194].

The unfortunate part of this well-designed account of the Battle of Trenton is the foreword by Mark Levin. An editor somewhere must have felt that the daytime talk radio personality was needed to market the book to neo-patriots, because he gets clear mention on the cover: "with a preface by his son Mark Levin". In the folksy dinner-table preface Mark Levin works to deny any technique or 'spin' in the historiography, declaring that the story is 'straightforward' and focuses only on the positive, uncomplicating aspects of Washington's personality (i.e., avoiding any kind of revisionist approaches to the 19th-century myth-making historiographic agenda). Jack Levin's work would have stood up on its own much better without this piece of conservative apologetics. I felt like I was reading William Bennett or Lynne Cheney.

A key example of where Mark Levin goes wrong? The Hessian soldiers being asleep because of a Christmas rum binge is contradicted clearly by primary sources from those who spent time with the prisoners of war, as detailed in Fischer's book, [b:Washington's Crossing|1206073|Washington's Crossing|David Hackett Fischer|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353284022s/1206073.jpg|1773948]. I do not fault Jack Levin for not using these sources, whether he didn't know of Fischer's sources or just preferred the more interesting story of the popularized version of events. It just has to be recognized that Jack Levin's way of arranging the story is loaded with his point of view. In this example, Mark Levin's meaning of 'straightforward' is that his dad's version makes the British look stupid and sloppy (which it turns out they weren't) and Washington look like a paragon of discipline and hard work (which he was). The object of this kind of writing is to be divisive and to create an 'us/them' mentality. The Hessians were likely beat down and tired on Dec 26, 1776 for the same reasons Washington's soldiers were--i.e, they were sitting on their butts in a kind of seige tactic in the dead of winter. So using the story to push virtues and values is part of the 19th-century myth-making agenda we are familiar with from so much writing about the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, and which is so easy for credulous neocons to buy into. Historians have known and recognized this agenda for decades, yet Mark Levin still wants to cloak his philosophical leanings behind misleading phrases like 'straightforward account' and 'let history speak for itself' (i.e., "believe me, and don't question me because I am good and right"). An edited and arranged story never speaks for itself; someone is always there doing the author's labor. Mark Levin's divisive alarmist agenda has rhetorical and philosophical foundations he is unwilling to explore, to detail, or wear on his sleeve--because it is a kind of salesmanship that has made him wealthy and popular.



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Review: George Washington: The Crossing

George Washington: The Crossing by Jack E Levin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Jack Levin shows engaging craft as historiographer, interleaving primary sources with his own narrative and with period art. Current maps showing marching paths were a bit confusing to follow, but only because the captions didn't always match the maps well. There is not much here that one can't get in equal detail on Wikipedia, which is not surprising because the American Revolution is a well-structured topic header that will have many serious and fastidious custodians contributing to and policing the pages. Again, the strength of Jack Levin's work is his way of making this into a unified piece of visual/written work, and this separates it from what I could find online. For a patriotic retelling, with some of the complications, historiographic arguments, and uncertainties woven in, I prefer Nathan Hale's graphic novel [b:Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy|13591161|Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales One Dead Spy|Nathan Hale|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1343090433s/13591161.jpg|19179194].

The unfortunate part of this well-designed account of the Battle of Trenton is the foreword by Mark Levin. An editor somewhere must have felt that the daytime talk radio personality was needed to market the book to neo-patriots, because he gets clear mention on the cover: "with a preface by his son Mark Levin". In the folksy dinner-table preface Mark Levin works to deny any technique or 'spin' in the historiography, declaring that the story is 'straightforward' and focuses only on the positive, uncomplicating aspects of Washington's personality (i.e., avoiding any kind of revisionist approaches to the 19th-century myth-making historiographic agenda). Jack Levin's work would have stood up on its own much better without this piece of conservative apologetics. I felt like I was reading William Bennett or Lynne Cheney.

A key example of where Mark Levin goes wrong? The Hessian soldiers being asleep because of a Christmas rum binge is contradicted clearly by primary sources from those who spent time with the prisoners of war, as detailed in Fischer's book, [b:Washington's Crossing|1206073|Washington's Crossing|David Hackett Fischer|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353284022s/1206073.jpg|1773948]. I do not fault Jack Levin for not using these sources, whether he didn't know of Fischer's sources or just preferred the more interesting story of the popularized version of events. It just has to be recognized that Jack Levin's way of arranging the story is loaded with his point of view. In this example, Mark Levin's meaning of 'straightforward' is that his dad's version makes the British look stupid and sloppy (which it turns out they weren't) and Washington look like a paragon of discipline and hard work (which he was). The object of this kind of writing is to be divisive and to create an 'us/them' mentality. The Hessians were likely beat down and tired on Dec 26, 1776 for the same reasons Washington's soldiers were--i.e, they were sitting on their butts in a kind of seige tactic in the dead of winter. So using the story to push virtues and values is part of the 19th-century myth-making agenda we are familiar with from so much writing about the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, and which is so easy for credulous neocons to buy into. Historians have known and recognized this agenda for decades, yet Mark Levin still wants to hide his philosophical leanings behind language like 'straightforward' and 'let history speak for itself'. An edited and arranged story never speaks for itself; someone is always there doing the author's work. Mark Levin's divisive alarmist agenda has rhetorical and philosophical foundations he is unwilling to explore, to detail, nor wear on his sleeve--because it is a kind of salesmanship that has made him wealthy and popular.



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Review: Energy Island: How one community harnessed the wind and changed their world

Energy Island: How one community harnessed the wind and changed their world by Allan Drummond

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



So I would actually refer to this kind of book as a kind of journalism, maybe reportage. The material covered in the story was not found on the most easily accessed internet material, so Drummond has a slice of current information that one would have to piece together with research even if it was available on the internet. Drummond clearly used journalistic techniques, interviewing and fact-checking with local residents of Samsø, Denmark, including teacher Søren Hermansen. The book gathers many aspects of the energy independence movement on this island around the key plot point of a single energy outage that tipped skeptical islanders toward the grant-funded project Hermansen had been pursuing for several years.

Drummond's cartoon illustrations, reminiscent of Jules Feiffer, are in corresponding relationship with the words, offering no additional narrative or counterpoint to the ideas presented. There is wide variety in the page layouts that offer graphic-novel type hooks for much of the information to hang on. Several local people are given stock-character status to ask skeptical questions, to then become converted, and then to showcase their projects. This also gave some narrative hooks to hang much information on.

I found that 100% of the island's electricity is renewable, but only 75% of its heating. This didn't make sense to me. If there's still 25% of heating coming from nonrenewable resources, why doesn't that 25% convert to electric heating?

The question of how it was all paid for is unaddressed. When I read about a school district in Iowa that installed a couple of large million-dollar wind turbines, the discussion of funding was central to the journalism. These kinds of projects tend to depend on loans, and have to be profitable in terms of net metering to pay down the loan (i.e., they need to produce more energy than the people installing it can use).



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Review: The Nile River

The Nile River by Claire Throp

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Claire Throp didn't even get credit on the front cover. You have to look on the spine or on the title page to see that the book had an author at all. This kind of series anonymity that favors uniformity across titles is a bit disturbing, because we go to such great lengths to help kids understand that books are made by people. This book wants us to value the "Explorer Tales" or "Read Me!" series marks over Throp's authorship.

As with other series books, this one is illustrated by a design team consisting of a designer, a production editor, and a picture researcher. Raintree is a Heinemann imprint, which is now an HMH subsidiary. (The multiple buyouts of different lines of Heinemann are really confusing--part owned by Pearson, part by Random House [which is now partners with Pearson and Penguin/Putnam for their print operations], and part by Houghton Mifflin [which is the correct line for this book]).

A number of the problems with this book come from the boilerplate approach to design, and another set of problems from a formulaic approach to writing 'readable' text. A glaring problem comes on pp 16-17, where it appears 1860 comes after 1862. The designer needed to invert the order of these two pages. The text is oversimplified to the point of being confusing. "Samuel baker's wife traveled everywhere with him. It is thought she was once a slave, and that Baker met her while traveling in Europe." What kind of writing is that? Another caption reads, "This old map shows what people thought the Nile looked like." That's not even true. Also, the cover of the book leads us to believe the book is going to be about Florence Baker and she is only featured briefly on p. 19.

Because these fact-book series are such an important staple in school and public libraries, it is worth discussing whether readability formulas justify the printing of a book. Topical internet sources may or may not be readable for many kids between ages 6-9, so is simplified text enough of an 'adaptation' or treatment of the information to justify a printed, four-color, hard cover production? Why doesn't Raintree just begin to sponsor a web page with all this information? Or, why doesn't someone take a readability formula to Wikipedia and adapt the entries to maybe 2-3 of the vital ranges of readability?



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Review: Going to Mecca

Going to Mecca by Na'ima B. Robert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is the second book on Islam in these past weeks of reviewing informational books. The Haj is a good celebratory topic for a picture book, and Robert provides enough details of the journey and the experience of Mecca to make for a fairly factual presentation that most people have not heard or seen before.

Following one family from London to Mecca gives the narrative a personal thread, as they join the vast throng of pilgrims. Cavallini did a good job of giving the family distinct features so that we could pick them out of the crowd on each page.

Cavallini's collage style is super close to the style so popular in protestant Christianity for the past fifty to sixty years--modern and stylized, but with the cut-out feel of stained glass. The textures and patterns of the cloth and paper she chooses make it interesting to look at, because evoking texture is a kind of visual inference that is fun to play around with--to 'read'.

Because the book chooses to focus on the complete journey of the Haj, there are some excellent narrative moments that are left unexplored. One of the best pages was the one at the As-Safaa, where the little girl is visualizing a thought bubble about Hajar. It would be great to see a thorough treatment of episodes like these where the connection to the mythic stories (i.e., orienting the soul) could be drawn out. Come to think of it, there's not much like this for the Judeo-Christian myth stories either...

I just have to note it's interesting that young people's books on Islam have increased in demand when there really aren't many books about world religions with higher representation in the English-speaking populations of the US and GB (you don't see picture books about the Camino Santiago, or the Mormon Pioneers outside of the religious publishing houses and retailers). The history and cultural issues of the past decade have made Islam a topic of wider interest. I read that the Islamic population in the US has doubled in the past decade, and one spokesman attributed this simply to the repeated mention Islam gets in the press, whether it is good or ill. People are curious!



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Review: What Makes a Baby

What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The strength of this book was that it made the topic into a narrative and gave it that kind of logic. So the book does something unique beyond the information you could just get from wikipedia, and justifiex its own birth as a paper, hard-cover, four-color book. Fiona Smyth's color scheme and some of the patterns and juxtapositions are downright psychedelic, and there was a lot done in the illustration to avoid any sense of realistic portrayals--it is not a biology book, it is a book about -talking to young people- about making babies.

For a 'fact book' this story leaves more questions than it gives answers--in fact it is so indirect that a couple of times it made me think, "maybe it doesn't work the way I thought it does." This indirectness might be a plus if a reader has adults to talk to about the things that are left out (and wants to talk to adults about sex). But if this is supposed to be a more or less benign way to get the straight information on what makes a baby, the approach is way too oblique.

Ultimately, the subtitle is what subverts the experience for this book. Silverberg tries so hard to be politically neutral, it's hard to tell who he's trying to avoid offending. On the one hand he keeps everything so gender neutral, you are left to wonder whether some women have sperm and some men have eggs (bad science). Is he trying to keep things neutral for the LGBT family? Or is he trying to keep things neutral for the anti-sex-ed Christian crowd--a book about sex ed that really doesn't tell how reproduction works? Maybe both. I'm just not sure inference is the key comprehension strategy we want to rely on with this topic.



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Review: What in the World Is a Mile? and Other Distance Measurements

What in the World Is a Mile? and Other Distance Measurements by Desirée Busierre

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This is one in a series on distance measurements, covering the Standard System. Others in the series are on quantity, metric system, weights, time, and area. It looks like the intent was to provide a definition on one side of the spread, and a concrete example on the other. The first concrete example was clear (7 inches between two toys), because the illustration showed it very well (a ruler). But for most others after that, the example was not borne out in the illustration, and thus not made concrete. For example, on the 'yards' page, the example was a football player running 15 yards. The illustration only shows a football player standing there smiling. If the intent is to teach, then the example pages don't really work. If the intent is to provide a teacher with something to talk about and teach, then maybe okay. There was no illustrator. A production designer (who did pretty good work given some clear constraints), used stock photos only for all the illustration.

As with many books, I'm wondering why we need to spend money on hard cover, four-color printing, and paper copy when all these measurement facts are readily available? The argument from the series editors would likely be 'reading level'. This book is intended to be readable by transitional readers, who have more or less figured out how English words and sentences work, and are becoming more fluent at reading orally and silently.

The measurement aspect of this series addresses clearly the content standards endorsed by NCTM. The series is also explicitly linked to the "Five Pillars" approach to literacy, which is research based but is also an inadequate view of literacy. The past ten years of research have borne out how impoverished the "Reading First" view of literacy is and even the damage it can do to school programs. The five pillars approach was an active effort to ignore key aspects of the psychology of reading such as motivation, which were found as vital in the NRP meta-analysis, but were not presented to teachers in the digested versions of the research study.



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Review: The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery

The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery by Dennis Brindell Fradin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The focus on a specific historical incident is something I usually like. And John Price's rescue is a dramatic and gripping story. Maybe I'm in a bad mood this week, but I found it annoying that so little was done to make the visual experience of this story complementary to the text. While the pictures could probably stand on their own as a storyboard of this narrative, they mirror the words almost exactly. Velasquez moves back and forth between a somewhat impressionistic style and a photorealistic one, which felt inconsistent across the book. The actual moment of the rescue felt a little bit confusing--mostly I was wondering where Jennings and his guards went. Neither the pictures nor the words explain this.

Overall, the past two weeks it has been difficult to find a book where it feels like the illustrator and author(s) spent time together to create a unified work of art. In general, I would fault editors for this, because it seems they are the ones who have to determine the nature and agreement on what a project is, and broker the relationship between the author and illustrator. Since the 1980s the glut in the picturebook market has ensured that a lot of medium quality books get out there, and it makes me wonder whether editors don't really know or talk about what makes a quality picturebook.



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Review: Let's Build a Playground

Let's Build a Playground by Michael Rosen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The book is a complete guide to how one group used the KaBoom! program to design and install a new neighborhood playground. This was an unusual title for Candlewick, but clearly designed to help teachers or kids' groups take on this challenge for themselves. Darrell Hammond's nonprofit organization is the heart of what this book is about, but the text puts it all from the perspective of the people involved in the project, which would do more to encourage people to do it!

This reminded me a lot of Barbara Lewis' [b:The Kid's Guide to Social Action: How to Solve the Social Problems You Choose - and Turn Creative Thinking into Positive Action|1038037|The Kid's Guide to Social Action How to Solve the Social Problems You Choose - and Turn Creative Thinking into Positive Action|Barbara A. Lewis|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1373660766s/1038037.jpg|1024393] in that it encourages kids to get involved and do something instead of having education be only talking about doing things. It could be a great title for Mike Opitz' fitlit series.

Photograph illustrations show diverse community members working on the playground at each stage of its development.



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Review: Here Come the Humpbacks!

Here Come the Humpbacks! by April Pulley Sayre

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The move up and down the Atlantic just wasn't a gripping story, although it holds together well. From Sayre's acknowledgments section: "Special thanks to Dr Phillip Clapham, who was so generous with his knowledge--clarifying complexities, reviewing text, and sharing terrific stories." I wanted to hear some of these. Any one of Sayre's pages could have taken off into a unique narrative, but the plot points were set and the common challenges and difficulties of the trip were laid out in a clear order. This timeline was a decent organizing structure to keep the text together, but it was not unusual nor did it create an experience beyond what I can find on the internet. Again, wikipedia is a clear judgment point for all informational text going forward.

Functional, corresponding illustrations don't complement the narrative nor provide counterpoint, even though the style and compositions have some clear strength and potential. The charcoal & pencil drawings are unusual and Hogan knows what to do with these media.



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Review: Too Hot? Too Cold?: Keeping Body Temperature Just Right

Too Hot? Too Cold?: Keeping Body Temperature Just Right by Caroline Arnold

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This book provides a clear and direct account of thermoregulation. The illustrations provide mostly pictures of the specific animals being discussed, and in a couple of places close-up cross-section diagrams of the anatomical processes (such as sweating). The illustration style is completely corresponding, with little to no complement, and no counterpoint. And the text offers me little more than I can find by looking up thermoregulation and following links to each of the types of animals being discussed. The strength is to put all of these animals together under this oft neglected subheading, which is an interesting one. And yet, where is the unifying narrative, the difficult question, the application to a problem, or something else to make me value this book above internet research?



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Review: Too Hot? Too Cold?: Keeping Body Temperature Just Right

Too Hot? Too Cold?: Keeping Body Temperature Just Right by Caroline Arnold

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This book provides a clear and direct account of thermoregulation. The illustrations provide mostly pictures of the specific animals being discussed, and in a couple of places close-up cross-section diagrams of the anatomical processes (such as sweating). The illustration style is completely corresponding, with little to no complement, and no counterpoint. And the text offers me little more than I can find by looking up thermoregulation and following links to each of the types of animals being discussed. The strength is to put all of these animals together under this oft neglected subheading, which is an interesting one. Where is the unifying narrative, the difficult question, the application to a problem, or something else to make me value this book above internet research?



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Review: The Adventures of Sir Givret the Short

The Adventures of Sir Givret the Short by Gerald Morris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Once again, I should have been reading the 4th book in this series (Sir Balin the Ill-Fated), but #2 was available in e-book from the library, so here we go.

This parody of Arthurian chivalry tales is fun to read, mostly because the stories don't take themselves so seriously as the original material often so painfully does. Morris easily subverts the ridiculousness of some of the extremes presented in medieval romance, but still gets me to want to follow his story from that ouvre. The jokes and twists feel like authentic folkish material, and I wouldn't be surprised to open up the Aarne Thompson index and find some of these motifs right there in European folk tales from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Entertaining! I'm also interested in looking at some more of Aaron Renier's work after reading this--he's got a good sense for drawing comical characters and I'd like to see some of his graphic novel work.

If I had to compare this work to anything, it would be Danny Kaye's "The Court Jester" (1955). (Which I still can't believe is not on Netflix--c'mon Ted Turner, cut some of your TCM stable loose!). Anyway, after thinking of Court Jester I couldn't think of any more to say about this book... Sorry.



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Review: Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters

Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters by Lenore Look

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I wanted to read the 2013 installment in this series, but this digital copy of the 2009 book was available at the library for my Kobo. I expect the series is consistent, so I'll go with this one for now.

The three best things about this book: 1. Look doesn't 'cure' Alvin of his phobias; 2. She never gets him and Calvin in trouble for ordering hundreds of dollars of camping equipment with the dad's credit card--instead using it as the punch line at dad's expense at the end of the book; 3. LeUyen Pham's illustrations.

I've loved Pham's drawing since I read Big Sister Little Sister [b:Big Sister, Little Sister|112878|Big Sister, Little Sister|LeUyen Pham|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347624681s/112878.jpg|108686], and loved seeing her style in this comical chapter-book series.

The book held together nicely, but some of the writing of the characters was too cute or clever. Realistic fiction comedy always has a tough standard to walk up in Beverly Cleary, and this doesn't quite make it. Granted, Cleary's books work on realism + understatement while this book joins Junie B in being more about realism + exaggeration. Because it is operating on exaggeration, some of the comedy is a little too 'disney channel' and easy. Still, I would read it aloud to my kids either at home or at school, and it would make a fun road trip audio book (but bring a hard/digital copy along to see the illustrations!)



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Review: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I sat down and read this whole book in B&N about a year ago. Zamperini's pre-war story and the shipwreck set this apart from other WWII POW narratives, but the themes largely echo those of others including the PTSD and broken lives after the war. The thing that truly made this story stand out for me was the depth of treatment Zamperini & Rensin gave to the post-war deep hatred of the Japanese many Americans brought home with them, and seemed to associate with any and all Asians here or abroad. His desire to find, confront, and kill Watanabe, the most cruel of his prison guards, was all-consuming. Zamperini's arduous path to free his soul took decades after his physical release. Exploring the humanity of POW camp guards is one of the strong points of this story.



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Review: Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian's Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II

Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian's Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II by Louis Zamperini

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I sat down and read this whole book in B&N about a year ago. Zamperini's pre-war story and the shipwreck set this apart from other WWII POW narratives, but the themes largely echo those of others including the PTSD and broken lives after the war. The thing that truly made this story stand out for me was the depth of treatment Zamperini & Rensin gave to the post-war deep hatred of the Japanese many Americans brought home with them, and seemed to associate with any and all Asians here or abroad. His desire to find, confront, and kill Watanabe, the most cruel of his prison guards, was all-consuming. Zamperini's arduous path to free his soul took decades after his physical release. I don't know if I'll ever read Unbroken, so I don't know if it does the same, but exploring the humanity of POW camp guards is one of the strong points of this story.



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Review: Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-Ending War

Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-Ending War by Deborah Ellis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Each young person featured in the book gets her or his own episode of 3-5 pages each. Ellis introduces each episode with some important context, and then the remainder of each is in first person biographical form. Each story is heartbreaking in its losses and brutalities, and for many you can tell the glimmer of hope they offer in the narrative is not likely to pan out in the coming years.

One of the difficult things about presenting the 'man's inhumanity to man' theme is that the sheer volume of inhumanity can be discouraging to young readers. I remember feeling this way when I watched Roots and The Holocaust miniseries as a child, and I still won't watch or read Of Mice and Men because it was too hard on me when I first experienced it--I wasn't ready. For young people who are struggling against the small inhumanities they experience everyday, the message that the whole world is this way and on a much grander scale is too horrifying. I think it takes special teachers and parents to help kids understand that morality is uneven in the world, and that each person's life history is largely a matter of luck (what Warren Buffett called the "ovarian lottery").

The difficult characters to understand in this type of story, however, are the ones who do the worst to others. Other authors clearly explore the psyches of prison guards, SS officers, and slave owners. In this book, however, the Taliban is presented as a monolithic, non-personal evil. The children telling their stories find the Taliban and their efforts incomprehensible, and speak of the Taliban collectively and not as individuals. Maybe Ellis was wise to let her informants tell the story as they feel it, instead of trying to make them seem like adults.



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Review: Survival at 120 Above

Survival at 120 Above by Debbie S. Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



For a US reader, the draw of this book is the range of unknown animals. The well-known mouse, kangaroo, and owl are more than balanced by unique Aussie animals like the dunnart, the spadefoot frog, and thorny devil. Australia is interesting, and I even know classes of Kindergartners who have gone on an Australia kick and checked out every book in the library.

Lu Benke told me one of the hallmarks of high-circulating dinosaur books is dynamic illustrations of animals in motion--this is what gets a dinosaur book to circulate. I would expect the same principle of engagement would hold true of animal books. In this one we have only hints of movement (the dingo illustration is a good one). Granted, we're looking at 120F, and one may not see a lot of animals running around, but the text is full of descriptions of life action. Plus, it's not like they had to go through the trouble of capturing photos of those moments--Jon Van Zyle gets to paint what he wants!

The paintings of the dunnart, mouse, and mulgara looked almost exactly alike. While these small animals may actually look a lot alike, it's the painter's job to help me see them with new eyes, or else to paint animals that don't look the same. These are all choices. Also, there are descriptions of the ningaui and a feral cat that get no illustration. Since it felt like the function of the book was to illustrate Australian animals, so I felt cheated getting only a text description of these.

This kind of survey of animals is increasingly inappropriate in the information age, where we can easily look up Animals of the Simpson Desert National Park (which has been renamed Munga-Thirri National Park since the book went into print). In the current informational climate, an emerging quality principle is whether the book does something better than Wikipedia (especially to justify a print copy). For example: is there a narrative thread, an unusual viewpoint, a characterization, an insight into the scientist's life, illustrations that go for a complementary or counterpoint relationship to the text? In a glutted market, we don't want to see redundancy with the internet produced in expensive four-color hard-cover books.



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Review: Snow School

Snow School by Sandra Markle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



While I didn't like this as much as Waiting for Ice, Markle & Marks are consistently good at presenting a realistic tone for what it might feel like to be an animal. The bloodiness and brutality of a predator/prey life is strong in both the words and the pictures. Words and pictures are in a corresponding relationship throughout the book. Marks' watercolors are just impressionistic enough to avoid a sense of photo-realism. While his animal figures are impeccably drawn, the looseness of the watercolor helps him emphasize dynamics and emotional tone over mere representation.

Being a trail runner I worry about cougars sometimes, so I've done a bit of research, and the one picture in this book that doesn't feel right is the one where the mother leopard is on the top of a high precipice looking down at a group of ibex. Everything I have read would suggest that a hunting cat would never choose a perch that would put it in relief against the sky. The watchword is, if you've been out on a trail, you've probably been stalked (but didn't know it). So while a snow leopard perched on a high rock may be dramatic, if they did things like that they probably wouldn't be so hard to find in the wild.



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Review: Faces

Faces by David Goodman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book is a visual exploration of a single subject across many media. While there are many conventional artistic media, Miller & Goodman seem to be in their element using found objects. The design engaged me, and an editor somewhere allowed the artists to make some fun book-making choices: flexible cloth cover; translucent paper in a couple of places; fuzzy texture on one page. The book was originally put out by the Tate Gallery.

I found it annoying that Miller & Goodman thought they had to try to rhyme the words. The book was primarily visual, and I thought by and large that the words were distracting (was this the hand of an editor, or the choice of the authors?). I would have preferred this to be a wordless picture book, with some kind of short guide at the end (or even at an internet link) about how to use some of the media.

Finding faces is one of the evolutionary facts of visual perception. Yarbus' [b:Eye Movements and Vision|8485179|Eye Movements and Vision|A.L. Yarbus|/assets/nocover/60x80.png|13350419] eye movement studies in the former Soviet Union showed how people's eyes track repeatedly and quickly to anything that resembles a face. And Bower's Primer of Infant Development [b:A Primer Of Infant Development|4294315|A Primer Of Infant Development|T.G.R. Bower|/assets/nocover/60x80.png|4341898] discusses studies where infants only a few days old focused and tracked two simple 'eye' dots on paper where they wouldn't register many other things. Most of us have 'found' faces in odd places, such as in the dirt, in the bark of a tree, in the pattern on a carpet or linoleum floor.

Interesting note about the peritext: After the copyright it says, "The moral rights of the authors have been asserted." I wondered what that meant, so I found that Moral Rights are regularly attached to art works in Europe, separate from copyright--go check it out on Wikipedia (Moral Rights). Artistic integrity is a separate legal concept from the right to reproduce a work.




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