Review: The Wing Wing Brothers Math Spectacular!

The Wing Wing Brothers Math Spectacular! by Ethan Long

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This arithmetic book demonstrates each arithmetic concept with carnival tricks (plate spinning, pie juggling). Unless it were a read-aloud it wouldn't be what helped kids learn the vocabulary and meanings. For example, it defines the 'plus sign' in words, "+ means plus". It's one of those things where if you already know how to read the words, you probably already know what a plus sign is. People who are trying to write to work with the curriculum should probably talk to some school teachers.

Some funny gags and an animator's sensibility to the drawings are both a plus to the book making it a decent experience. But amid the larger stack of informational books, I had a hard time picking this one up and finishing it. Despite the artwork, the arithmetic presentation, the storyline, was boring.

Hmmm. Back matter correlates the book to the Common Core State Standards. I guess we'll be seeing more of that in the coming years, but it's a bit of a shock to see it so prominent in the back matter, as if this is more important than the fact-checking which gets much smaller print under the CCSS blurb.

No designer credited. One of the things that drives me crazy in books that use comic strip boxes in picturebooks is when you can't tell whether a sequence of boxes is supposed to go all the way across the gutter or whether you're supposed to wrap around to the left again when you hit the gutter. This book had a few spreads where the design of facing pages made this difficult to navigate.



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Review: DK Eyewitness Books: Cat

DK Eyewitness Books: Cat by Juliet Clutton-Brock

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I'm a fan of the Eyewitness format. DK learned the best of what they could from magazine graphic design and has applied a powerful template. My son Alma loves this series, including the videos.

This book and Jenkins' Dog & Cat book both presented incorrect information about the cat's collarbone. I found the right answers on wikipedia and other internet sources. This was disappointing. What kind of research standard is there here?

KOBO: The ereader displays only half the double spread at a time, which interrupts the Eyewitness formula of one dominant central image that crosses the gutter and takes up most of the page. This is an awesome format, and cutting it in half just doesn't work. I don't have much hope right now for the ereader, especially where informational text is concerned. Putting a full double page spread on a 7" screen is just too small an image, especially when there are captions, diagrams, and text vignettes in smaller print.

Who will be the first company to come out with a double-page ereader that has a book-like gutter?



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Review: Dogs and Cats

Dogs and Cats by Steve Jenkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The remarkable thing about this book is that he does so many things with the paper to give the cats and dogs realistic features. I enjoyed that. It appears Jenkins does his own design with maybe staff designers behind him.

The 'turn the book over' thing is just a gimmick and I'm not sure it actually helps the book any. Kind of interesting and made me pay attention to the bookness of the thing.

So I read this book at the same time I had the DK Eyewitness Cat book out on my Kobo ereader. Jenkins' book said cats have no collarbone, and the DK book said clearly that they DO have a collarbone. I went to the internet and found they were both wrong. What cats do have is unattached clavicles that enable the cat to collapse the collarbone structure to pass through narrow spaces. Come on guys, do the research! I found this more detailed information on wikipedia and in three other places. Because the dog and cat sub-genre is so thoroughly overdone, I guess people don't even consider doing careful research or going to the science. Any veterinary book on cats would have had this information.



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Review: Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy by Nathan Hale

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Sources: Okay, it was refreshing that Hale was honest about the use of secondary sources--even part of the book's charm. But his excuse just wasn't true:
Hale: These books are all secondary sources. Didn't you use any actual research documents, like newspapers and journals from the period?

Baby: No. The people at the library won't give us that stuff.
Hale: Why not?
Baby: Because we're babies!
Hale: Oh, right.
Baby: You need a college degree to get into the original documents.

Maybe the special collections libraries at universities are exclusive this way (not by possessing a degree, but by being enrolled), but most of the primary source documents anyone would ever need for Revolutionary War era research are available on the internet. To me this just seems lazy.

The comic relief gags to keep the narrative moving forward were corny yet entertaining. The drawings were crisp, realistic, and easy to look at. I like Hale's style. Hale cooperated with Chad Beckerman on the design, and acknowledged Matt Holm for some design tips.

The whole point of this is to be the lighter, engaging side of history so I was okay that it just glosses the high points of the plot while not delving into all the humanity. Leave that to another author and project.

The narrative history genre is great for presenting the broad outline of events and their connections in a memorable way.



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Review: Iceberg, Right Ahead! The Tragedy of the Titanic

Iceberg, Right Ahead! The Tragedy of the Titanic by Stephanie Sammartino McPherson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book is highly browsable, with each header providing a self-contained 'story' about a person or an aspect of the ship's story. While organized in chronological sections, anyone who already knows the order of the story won't be thrown off by browsing around. It was good to see the contemporary photos, illustrations, and diagrams from the time of the sinking, but just as interesting to see some of the underwater photos and museum exhibit pieces.

Overall, I find the staying power of this story strange. There are thousands of well-documented shipwreck stories and many lives lost. In its own way, this book has become almost a genre. There's a clear set of expectations for a sense of darkness and tragedy, a theme running around the possibility the sinking could have been averted, the hubris of the builders, the injustices of lost lives. So why is this story so iconic?

Some masterful design choices made the book compelling. The sea-green and black color scheme in particular seems to be lifted from many of the actual underwater photos, and contributes to the tone. These colors were used for the text vignettes and the diagrams to good effect. No designer was credited, which is a shame.

Sources: The book is very well sourced, with a thorough page sourcing section, a two-page bibliography, and a full page of outside resources for further information. While all of this information might be found on the internet if one were to look up specific topics or people, having it all compiled and organized in one place is a handy strength.



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Review: Get the Scoop on Animal Poop

Get the Scoop on Animal Poop by Dawn Cusick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



So I understand the lure of the pun with a book like this, but there are seriously four other books with almost exactly this same title. The gross topics are certainly popular, and this book rides that wave.

The facts in this book are pretty interesting, though. I thought her approach to scatology was very thorough, and browsable. In fact, this isn't really a book about poop at all--it's a complete survey of animals using poop as the unifying topic. Just as another science book might focus on habitat or food, this one cuts through the animal world with the one topic of focus.

Zombie ants and animals that eat poop are two favorite pages. I enjoyed how long the book was, without losing its high interest--it's really very thorough.

Sources: Not so good. Cusick gives a handful of books, but no evidence of her research. Without clear sourcing of the research, and no evidence of her own qualifications I want more connection to the science and research world of coprology.

What does this book do that an internet search wouldn't? A lot of the facts in the book are right there on wikipedia, but this book's cachet is its volume of facts, the number of animals it works with, and the way this helps diversify and add interest to the topic. There isn't an easy-to-find web site that covers this topic.



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Review: Heart of a Samurai

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



An enjoyable adventure story--the cover calls it a 'real life adventure.' Being aboard a whaling ship in the mid-1800s can't have been half this romantic, but Preus focuses on the personal wonder of being possibly the first Japanese national to live in the USA. All the facts jibe with what I remember from my Japanese History courses umpteen years ago in college. The shift from the Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration opens Japan to foreign contact, and within a few years emissaries from Japan are scouting the Western world for anything and everything that will help put Japan on competitive footing. As historical fiction, the book feels accurate and Preus gives a clear set of sources, and recounts which plot elements were taken directly from historical record.

As biography, I found it less interesting than I hoped for. While Manjiro was a strong central character, I was hoping for more inner conflict and maybe a more 3-dimensional character. I can't tell that Preus wants to tell us something interesting about humanity or explore someone's inner workings as we have come to expect from great fact-based writers for grownups (like Michener or Gore Vidal). Also, there is a clear set of primary sources to draw from--Manjiro's drawings and notebooks. This might have been the thing to focus on to create some post-modern sensibility or character development instead of just the straightforward chronological plot-based story.



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