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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