Alex and his mother (both portrayed with pale skin), along with their dog, Nico, sometimes go on adventures together—but often, “Mommy…wants to play with us but her body can’t.” Over a week, Mom experiences a new symptom each day—her specific illness isn’t disclosed—which Alex then explains to Nico, using easy-to-understand similes: “Mama can’t hike with […]
The Hellas Station is a trailblazing Mars colony staffed by only a handful of international, highly competent astronauts. One of these exceptional colonists is extra-special: Adam Flynn is the first human born on Mars (sadly, his mother died from cancer in the radiation-rich environment). Seventeen-year-old Adam has matured to be a survival-hardened and resourceful youth […]
Goldberg (1883-1970) imagined how ordinary objects might do extraordinary things. He channeled his ideas into comics, and along the way, the name Rube Goldberg became an adjective: “doing something simple in a very complicated way that is not necessary.” Take Goldberg’s comic “Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin”—a man takes a spoonful of soup, which […]
Poor Sloth! Blown about by rough winds, she tumbles from her leafy home and hurts her toe. Luckily, a helpful, brown-skinned human comes to her aid. The story is told entirely in three-word rhyming sentences. The sloth’s dramatic descent is summed up with a “Blow, sloth, blow” and “Whoa, sloth, whoa!” “Oh, sloth, oh! Your […]
The book opens during a hot August on Daisy’s 18th birthday, although she feels too miserable to enjoy the celebration. David is her second love after the recorder, but now he’s broken up with her. When school begins, Daisy meets new classmate Flora, who’s from Dublin and has her own passion for music as an […]
Industrialization has ravaged Earth, and the Concerns (i.e., corporations) that govern the planet are desperate for resources and locations to colonize. Everyone or everything must be of use to the Concerns, or they’ll be discarded. So the scientific team in orbit around Shroud, a moon with an extraordinary amount of electromagnetic radiation and what actually […]
Rocco Vittori, a fallen star of Formula 1, is desperate to reclaim his place on the podium. Nico Angelini, a fiercely talented and trailblazing driver, is determined to rise to the top of a sport that’s long shut out women like her. The pair’s rivalry kicks off in the public arena of social media and […]
An unseen narrator reminds Alpaca to “pack-a a snack-a.” Then Alpaca and Mom walk to the bus stop and wait. (Mom will be fine while Alpaca’s at school, the narrator reassures readers.) At school, the sounds of footsteps going “click-clack-a” reverberate through the hallways; Principal Quack-awelcomes everyone. Alpaca’s a bit worried—will the teacher, Miss Yak-a, […]
Holt, a journalist who has written several books about overlooked women in history, here turns her attention to an odd gap in the world of natural history—namely, the lack of any formal record of the giant panda, “whose whereabouts, habitat, and behavior were still unknown” other than by anecdote outside China. Indeed, when Kermit and […]
The first entry, “A Gringo Died Today,” kicks things off in a village in Guatemala. As the title suggests, the dead body of a foreigner is discovered on a beach; the story of how that dead body came to be there is one that lands a local in some serious trouble. In “The Eagle of […]