A delightfully enlightening account and a welcome antidote to our own time’s precarious truthiness.
The story of Thomas Jefferson’s fury at a French scientist’s misinformation about the New World introduces young readers to the scientific inquiry process.
While Jefferson and the other American revolutionaries fought for independence from Britain, he undertook a lesser-known battle—against scientific misinformation. Jefferson loved the natural world: He collected fossils and bones and took pride in accurately measuring everything from air temperature to the weight of catfish. So it was galling to him when French scientist Count Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon published an encyclopedia declaring the New World “swampy and cold,” with small bears and “puny” wolves—inferior to Europe. Anderson cleverly juxtaposes Buffon’s faulty scientific claims alongside Jefferson’s colorful outrage: “Hogwash!” “Poppycock!” She succinctly lays out Jefferson’s critique: Buffon had never been to the New World—was he biased? Where did he get his information? To convince Buffon of his errors, Jefferson sought evidence—measurements of New World animals, pelts to prove their existence, even an actual moose. Holmes wittily presents Jefferson’s inquiries through comic-book panels depicting heads exploding with arguments set against sepia-colored notebook pages. In an author’s note, Anderson calls out Jefferson for his bias as the owner of enslaved persons and for his lack of forethought in how Americans’ exploration of the Louisiana Purchase would affect Indigenous people.
A delightfully enlightening account and a welcome antidote to our own time’s precarious truthiness. (timeline of Thomas Jefferson’s life, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781635926200
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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