A stirring invitation to leap, dive, soar, plunge and thrill to the natural world’s wonders and glories.
“Right outside your window there’s a world to explore,” writes Kerley. “Ready?” In huge, bright, sharply focused photos, a hang glider and a mountain climber dangle in midair, a paleontologist carefully brushes dirt off a fossil, an astronaut dangles near the International Space Station, and spelunkers clamber amid spectacular crystals. These dramatic images mingle with equally eye-filling scenes of muddy, soaked, laughing young children—some venturing alone down a forest path or over jumbles of rock, others peering into a snow cave or a starry sky. “Size things up,” suggests the author. “Get a firm grip. Then… / …start climbing.” This may well leave safety-obsessed parents with the vapors, but that may be all to the good. Explanatory captions for several of the photographs, from very brief profiles of the explorers to the stories behind the photos themselves, appear at the end.
Vivid glimpses of what waits for anyone who is willing to stop just looking and go. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4263-1114-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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There are many parallel legends – the seal women, for example, with their strange sad longings – but none is more direct than this American Indian story of a girl who is carried away in a horses’ stampede…to ride thenceforth by the side of a beautiful stallion who leads the wild horses. The girl had always loved horses, and seemed to understand them “in a special way”; a year after her disappearance her people find her riding beside the stallion, calf in tow, and take her home despite his strong resistance. But she is unhappy and returns to the stallion; after that, a beautiful mare is seen riding always beside him. Goble tells the story soberly, allowing it to settle, to find its own level. The illustrations are in the familiar striking Goble style, but softened out here and there with masses of flowers and foliage – suitable perhaps for the switch in subject matter from war to love, but we miss the spanking clean design of Custer’s Last Battle and The Fetterman Fight. 6-7
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1978
ISBN: 0689845049
Page Count: -
Publisher: Bradbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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