An essential acknowledgement of an under-sung scientist.
Sommer’s children’s book celebrates Nancy Grace Roman, the first woman executive of NASA, who was responsible for the beginning of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Opening with Roman’s defense of the idea for a telescope placed beyond Earth’s atmosphere, this biography then backtracks to Roman’s childhood. Even early on, as a child in the 1920s and 1930s, young Roman is captivated by the stars. Her family moves frequently, and the stars serve as Roman’s constant whenever she has to leave friends behind. Despite being discouraged from her studies by high school counselors, Roman pursues a career in science, attending Swarthmore College, one of only a few co-ed colleges at the time. After earning a degree in astronomy, she completes a doctorate and successfully publishes articles and pursues research before becoming the Chief of Astronomy for the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration. From this point, the narrative focuses on the mission to create a space telescope and send it into the great beyond. Even after Roman’s retirement from NASA, she remains involved with launching the Hubble into space. (The text remarks, “Is it any wonder her co-workers dubbed her ‘Mother of Hubble?’”) Along with descriptions of Roman’s accomplishments, Sommer weaves in quotes from Roman, written in cursive, about her work. Detailed notes illuminating some of the challenges that Roman and the Hubble faced, along with a full timeline of events in both Roman’s life and the Hubble’s history, are included in the endpapers. Sommer’s descriptive text is plainly delivered, with pacing that focuses on the important, star-centered moments in Roman’s life and the challenges she overcomes. Young feminist scientists are sure to notice the casual disparagement from Swarthmore’s head of the physics department, and to be appreciative that pioneering scientists such as Roman carved a path for others. Cobb’s stylized watercolor illustrations sometimes seem to show Roman looking older than her description, but the gorgeous backgrounds and detailed images of telescopes more than make up for that.
An essential acknowledgement of an under-sung scientist.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781955791519
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Braughler Books LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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