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.



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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 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.



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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 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.



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Review: Basher Science: Extreme Physics

Basher Science: Extreme Physics by Simon Basher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Other noteworthy things about this series not mentioned in my review of the Biology book:
Simon Basher, the illustrator, originated this concept series in the UK for Toucan Books, and now published in the US by a Macmillan imprint.
Dan Green is the series writer.
Each title has a scientist consultant, this one James Valles at Brown University.
As with many smaller books, I question the need for a Table of Contents and Index in this series. It seems like one of those things the editors and publishers probably told Basher he needed and he just said OK. It would be interesting to see if this is something that was just added for the US publication



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Review: Basher Science: Extreme Biology

Basher Science: Extreme Biology by Simon Basher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The Nickelodeon voice and anime drawings set the Basher Science series apart from any other science books I've read. The personification (or characterization) was a little annoying because sometimes a character stood in place of an object, and other times in place of a process. I think this series might work better if it actually were game cards and the idea was to play the science rather than read about it. The cartoon drawings don't stand in well for microscope photos and realistic diagrams, and the series doesn't pretend to provide this kind of information. So, again, I think if the series is going to look game-like Basher should just make the game. I found myself engaged in some of the individual pages or chapters, but the book as a whole was not an engaging cover-to-cover read. It would be read best in chunks over time.



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Review: The Golden Book of the Mysterious

The Golden Book of the Mysterious by Jane Werner Watson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is the one my brother Eric had when we were kids. I'm going to include this type of book in the upcoming chapter on Informational Books, so I'm looking closely at how the books use informational conventions, rhetoric, and formatting. The intent of the writing and the illustration is obviously to inform. But with the paranormal topic writers also intend to leave readers with uncertainty and questions rather than answers--also to frighten them some! Books on the paranormal are great for busting through the fences we want to put around genres in education.



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Review: The Ultimate Collection of Pro Football Records

The Ultimate Collection of Pro Football Records by Shane Frederick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is an excellent example of a complex text format that is not about reading a lot of paragraphs. The overall point of the book is to present a catalog tables of records set in the NFL. The reading consists in knowing how to read and interpret the significance of each table. As such, a lot of context is missing and would have to be filled in with background knowledge about the game--the book would be best read with a long-time football fan. And I fear that these simple record tables pale in comparison to the kind of table/chart analysis people do to play fantasy football. I hear more and more kids talking about that game.

Still, there is always that background conversation about 'who was the greatest x'. So i think for sparking football conversation and getting a group of kids huddled around a book looking at the stats, this is a good pick. I'm an occasional football fan, and found it interesting enough to spend time with.

One of my wishes for a book like this is that it would provide the most direct information possible to get me to video clips of some of the more amazing records. Only four people have kicked a 63-yard field goal in the history of the NFL (one happened in 2012, after the book went to press). I had to search around quite a bit to find all of them in video on NFL.com or youtube. I imagine these clips are out there, and that's some of the media research I'd like to see Eric Gohr doing over at Capstone!



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Review: The Ultimate Collection of Pro Football Records

The Ultimate Collection of Pro Football Records by Shane Frederick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is an excellent example of a complex text format that is not about reading a lot of paragraphs. The overall point of the book is to present a catalog tables of records set in the NFL. The reading consists in knowing how to read and interpret the significance of each table. As such, a lot of context is missing and would have to be filled in with background knowledge about the game--the book would be best read with a long-time football fan. And I fear that these simple record tables pale in comparison to the kind of table/chart analysis people do to play fantasy football. And I hear more and more kids talking about that game.

And still, there is always that background conversation about 'who was the greatest x'. So i think for sparking football conversation and getting a group of kids huddled around a book looking at the stats, this is a good pick. I'm an occasional football fan, and found it interesting enough to spend time with.

One of my wishes for a book like this is that it would provide the most direct information possible to get me to video clips of some of the more amazing records. Only four people have kicked a 63-yard field goal in the history of the NFL (one happened in 2012, after the book went to press). I had to search around quite a bit to find all of them in video on NFL.com or youtube. I imagine these clips are out there, and that's some of the media research I'd like to see Eric Gohr doing over at Capstone!



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Review: What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy by Gregory Maguire

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Maguire's writerly style was the strength of this book, and his interweaving of two stories, and the meta-awareness of narrative throughout the book.

My favorite theme is how he dealt with the perennial question of whether a story is true. I often have kids ask me if a story I'm telling is 'true' and I always answer, "All stories are true." Because whatever I am telling IS the story. Yes, I know that's not what they really mean. But the broader human desire to know whether a story is based on 'real events' is more complicated than we allow. And in a way, we learn more about children's relationship to 'reality' in informational text through the questions they ask about fantasy. What difference does it make to a child to know whether a story happened in history or whether it happened in imagination? This is a question of hope and fear: they want to know whether what the story evokes or provokes is likely to happen to them outside the narrative. The question isn't "is it real" or "is it true" it's really "Could that be me?" And what does the answer to this question do for the imagination?

His early development of the fantastic main character reminded me of William Mayne's [b:Hob and the Goblins|805577|Hob and the Goblins|William Mayne|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1178556401s/805577.jpg|2319960], where I really got to try to enter the mind of someone who didn't think or act like a human. But apparently this wasn't sustainable. While he maintained a few elements to make the fairies non-human, too much of it felt like he had drifted over into a simple mirror-world populated by small humans. That was disappointing. Ultimately, What-the-Dickens and Pepper end up seeming heroic because they act as modern Americans would value them acting. I wanted them to stay weird, in the old sense of the word.



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

This or That Animal Debate: A Rip-Roaring Game of Either/Or Questions by Joan Axelrod-Contrada

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This series is all about engagement. It drew me in, got me thinking and reacting to the paired choice, and then moved me on to the next pair.

From the same Edge series as [b:This or That Survival Debate|14352894|This or That Survival Debate A Rip-Roaring Game of Either/Or Questions|Erik Heinrich|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1355892043s/14352894.jpg|19994823], Axelrod-Contrada provided an engaging 'would you rather' game. Again, this kind of arbitrary choice is just in good fun, and intended to provide an excuse for detailing specific facts about animals. It made the following facts memorable: Over 100 people are killed each year by box jellyfish, but only about 5-6 in shark attacks; A wolf can run 22 miles in a stretch, but a cheetah can only go for less than a minute; recent stories of feral children have them living with wild dogs and wild monkeys!

Interestingly, the photos for this book seem less drawn from stock photo collections. Specific individuals are noted in 15 or so instances with no connection to a stock photo company. To me this suggests the research was all internet, and the 'just right' photos found through google searches belonged to individuals rather than a company. Eric Gohl is credited as the media researcher, so I assume this was his work. I think I'll call Capstone to see if I can ask him a few questions about process.



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Review: How Robots Work

How Robots Work by Jenny Moss

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This "Edge" series from Capstone pairs basic bare bones writing with large photos or hyper-realistic artwork to cover a topic. The topic is divided into chapters, and within each chapter subheaders deal with subtopics. Text boxes provide additional relevant facts on the subtopic.

The rationale for this book is that it takes a topic like Robots and spans a wide breadth of subtopics. I was expecting I could find this information on the internet, but not all gathered into one place. In this case, nearly EVERYTHING in the book was already gathered and organized on the Wikipedia page. The added photos don't really justify this kind of duplication. If I were doing or assigning a report on this subject, I would want the researcher to be the one finding and adding the photos to each subtopic for an active, visual learning experience--not just finding stock photos in a book.



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Review: Awesome Space Robots

Awesome Space Robots by Michael O'Hearn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This "Edge" series from Capstone pairs basic bare bones writing with large photos or hyper-realistic artwork to cover a topic. The topic is divided into chapters, and within each chapter subheaders deal with subtopics. Text boxes provide additional relevant facts on the subtopic.

The rationale for this book is that it takes a topic like Robots and spans a wide breadth of subtopics. I was expecting I could find this information on the internet, but not all gathered into one place. In this case, it was true. Because this book covers only the robots used in the space programs, there isn't a page dedicated to it. The Wikipedia article on Robotic Spacecraft doesn't cover all the subtopics this book does. So the book gets its rationale for existing by gathering information in one place and providing a corresponding visual experience. What I'm wondering is if this is the kind of specialized topic that would even be helpful for the series' purpose, which would be the school research report.



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Review: Valentine Be Mine

Valentine Be Mine by Jacqueline Farmer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Farmer's book was the basic set of historical facts on where Valentine's Day originated. Farmer debunks the old idea that this Catholic holiday was connected to an earlier Roman festival. She cites 'recent research', but the book has no source notes or bibliography to credit her sources. Unfortunately, the text of this book offers very little beyond the Wikipedia entry. The writing doesn't do much to create an overarching narrative or questions to be answered, so I am left wondering why this mirror of the internet gets to be printed on paper, hard-cover, and full color.

Halsey & Addy's collaged illustrations on canvas background gave the impression of beautiful valentines hand-made from ephemera. This was a fun style to look at and would make for a fun project to mimic. Farmer did add a couple of how-to instructions in the book to encourage this kind of project.



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Review: Welcome to Your Awesome Robot

Welcome to Your Awesome Robot by Viviane Schwarz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fun visual reboot of the simple how-to book. Schwarz uses the graphic design elements familiar from instruction manuals to augment her children's graphic novel format. I love how the main text of the book is entirely in graphic novel format, allowing dialog to rule the text. She used the dialog to set up gags with a straight-man/funny-man structure. Her simple graphic coloring techniques are consistent with her drawing style--somehow a charming combination of tightness and looseness to the lines. To me it said 'homemade doesn't have to mean shoddy'. When I got to the end and saw a robot party with kids all making their own costumes, I was willing to bet Schwarz actually had this party!

I did think it was misleading not to note explicitly on the title page that this is actually a book about making robot costumes, not robots. But there's a pretend play thing going on that Schwarz brings up in the earliest dialog, so it doesn't feel like a lie.

The interesting backstory here is Flying Eye Books. An imprint of independent art-house graphic design group Nowbrow, the list of titles is short but impressive. The Hilda series has seen some notoriety, but there is a nice stable of talent here! It made me wonder how this UK company got their books into a Colorado library collection? Lu, who bought this and how did they know?



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Review: Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Castle

Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Castle by Stephen Biesty

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



One reason I don't like this book is that it is not well sourced, and does little to encourage me to look and read outside this text at all. No consultation with historians, librarians, or other experts is cited. The virtue of the unique illustrated cross sections give this book a lot of reasons to stand alone, but it's not right for Biesty to hide his research. Shouldn't this have been what DK added for a 2013 edition? This dragged the book down to a 3 from a 4 for me.

Anyway, Biesty's cross-sections are perfect for the DK standard format, because titles in the Eyewitness series don't always offer something worth looking at repeatedly in the central image. Biesty's illustrations make you sit and look, and look, and look again. Another reason I like this book is because it contradicts the Common Core directly by providing what I would call 'scaffolded' text. When I am not already interested in a mundane topic, I can count on DK to know how to draw me in and walk me through a broad range of subtopics. I would say breadth within a topic rather than depth is DK's strength in this format. But because of the broad range and the small amount of text, the information is largely surface-level.

This title exemplifies what I expect from Dorling Kindersly's informational text, and delivers even better than the more developed Eyewitness series.
1. Each double-page spread is a self-contained informational text, covering a complete sub-topic.
2. There is a main central image and a main central text to focus me.
3. There are a few or several side images with their own caption- or label-style text to encourage within-page browsing.
4. The main image is captioned or labeled to encourage multiple ways of looking at the center.
I love this format. It makes me want to spend time on the single spread, and to go back to favorites when browsing around. It also encourages browsing, because while there may be a progression to the order I don't need to read in order.

YIKES! As far as I could tell, there is nothing changed from the 1994 original edition other than the cover art and some small design features around the peritext at the beginning of the book. However, DK did NOT put any information in the peritext to suggest that this is a new edition of the old book. That's illegal, isn't it? They've made it look like this is a brand new 2013 title.



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Review: Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Castle

Stephen Biesty's Cross-Sections Castle by Stephen Biesty

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



One reason I don't like this book is that it is not well sourced, and does little to encourage me to look and read outside this text at all. No consultations with historians, librarians, or other experts is cited. The virtue of the unique illustrated cross sections give this book a lot of reasons to stand alone, but it's not right for Biesty to hide his research. Shouldn't this have been what DK added for a 2013 edition? This dragged the book down to a 3 from a 4 for me.

Anyway, Biesty's cross-sections are perfect for the DK standard format, because titles in the Eyewitness series don't always offer something worth looking at repeatedly in the central image. Biesty's illustrations make you sit and look, and look, and look again. Another reason I like this book is because it contradicts the Common Core directly by providing what I would call 'scaffolded' text. When I am not already interested in a mundane topic, I can count on DK to know how to draw me in and walk me through a broad range of subtopics. I would say breadth within a topic rather than depth is DK's strength in this format. But because of the broad range and the small amount of text, the information is largely surface-level.

This title exemplifies what I expect from Dorling Kindersly's informational text, and delivers even better than the more developed Eyewitness series.
1. Each double-page spread is a self-contained informational text, covering a complete sub-topic.
2. There is a main central image and a main central text to focus me.
3. There are a few or several side images with their own caption- or label-style text to encourage within-page browsing.
4. The main image is captioned or labeled to encourage multiple ways of looking at the center.
I love this format. It makes me want to spend time on the single spread, and to go back to favorites when browsing around. It also encourages browsing, because while there may be a progression to the order I don't need to read in order.

YIKES! As far as I could tell, there is nothing changed from the 1994 original edition other than the cover art and some small design features around the peritext at the beginning of the book. However, DK did NOT put any information in the peritext to suggest that this is a new edition of the old book. That's illegal, isn't it? They've made it look like this is a brand new 2013 title.



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Review: Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope

Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope by Bridget Heos

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Another title in the HMH series, Scientists in the Field, this one has the hallmark features: A lot of carefully written text, and a photographer taking original photos for the project.

One of the surprising features of this series is the text density, and the no-holds-barred use of the science vocabulary--it's really thick. I wonder if the editors went this direction because of how CCSS encourages the reading of 'complex text'? At any rate, I find it refreshing that the series assumes children learn vocabulary by reading it, not that they have to know it in advance in order to read. [b:How Children Learn the Meanings of Words|705021|How Children Learn the Meanings of Words|Paul Bloom|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347946005s/705021.jpg|691306] Key terms are repeated often enough in context to give readers multiple high-quality 'hits' on new meanings and words . Bridget Heos has likely spent time trying to explain science to kids, because she reviews and re-explains things that might become confusing for young readers. As an adult I found this an annoying delay in the aesthetic experience, but I see why she did it.

The narrative development of the science of these transgenic animals is fascinating! What we have here is a children's book on a specific thread of genetic engineering. As with other titles in the series, the text and pictures focus on the actual scientists and their work: Randy Lewis, Holly Steinkraus, and Heather Rothmann show up throughout the text. There is a balance of men and women scientists, but Heos and Comins have made sure that women feature prominently as key scientists throughout the whole text. All of the science is presented in context of this search for how to make spider web protein in large quantities.



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Review: Eruption!: Volcanoes and the Science of Saving Lives

Eruption!: Volcanoes and the Science of Saving Lives by Elizabeth Rusch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



So this is the third title I've reviewed in HMH's Scientists in the Field series. Based on this sample, I really like the series.

What I don't like is how HMH is hitching its wagon to the dim star of the Common Core State Standards. The standards movement has little to recommend itself to anyone. There is no research to show that this reform movement has accomplished anything that wouldn't have happened just by leaving schools alone. Standards linked with testing have only created more problems and taken our country's children further from learning either content or useful processes for the past 20 years. CCSS was just a non-educators' stab at repackaging crap. No matter what kind of paper you wrap it in, it's still crap.

I was disappointed to read that Elizabeth Rusch has been caught up in this short-sighted (and likely short-lived 'accountability' exercise). There are more than ten states now working to distance themselves from CCSS and repeal their connections to CCSS and PARCC, and this before they have even gained much traction at all. One of my editors asked us not to reference CCSS in our upcoming edition because of how it is not gaining the momentum for a comprehensive rollout everyone anticipated. And we don't need a national curriculum anyway.

But the content in this series is still great! If the CCSS were just given to authors and publishing houses instead of to testing companies and school districts and kids, maybe we'd see more high-quality series like this. I was riveted by this book, and the narrative thread following three major eruptions (four, including the base narrative of St Helens) kept me moving forward from chapter to chapter. It was written like a cliffhanger. The scientists are the main characters in each set of chapters, and Rusch brilliantly sets the non-US scientists at the forefront of the narrative! An excellent multicultural text.

The fact that Rusch and Uhlman went to Indonesia to do live research during the eruption of Merapi was absolutely amazing. Upshot: I am sitting here in 2013 reading an obviously well-produced (i.e., time-consuming) book with research that reaches only back to 2010-2011. This kind of currency is extremely rare! I didn't follow Merapi when it was happening, so all this information was new to me, and I felt parochial for having only sketchy awareness that something so significant was happening just a couple of years ago.

Uhlman's photographs throughout the book were breathtaking, and the recentness of the Indonesia/Merapi set made it even more so. There are very few stock companies in the photo credits, and more scientific and news organizations, along with Uhlman and even three by Rusch. This lends the book even more credibility as a journalistic piece.



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