Review by New York Times Review
WHAT happened to us? To America? To that industrious, boot-strappy nation of strivers, whose honest work earned honest pay? It's never been more obvious: some folks aren't pulling their weight. Which brings us to the vexing question behind Susan Orlean's first picture book: "Why don't more babies work?" In "Lazy Little Loafers," a know-it-all big sister sets out to understand why babies are such freeloaders. Her new baby brother is the perfect place to start. She dangles help-wanted ads from the newspaper over his crib. He sucks his thumb. While she trudges to school wearing a backpack the size of a Frigidaire, he lounges in a stroller with a bottle. "You don't have to be a genius to realize that babies are just lazy," she grumbles. "There are so many jobs in the world but babies never do any of them!" A writer for The New Yorker, Orlean knows a thing or two about jobs. She's written about an eclectic cast of workers, from an orchid thief to a female bull-fighter. (The bullfighter makes an appearance in "Lazy Little Loafers," standing in the ranks of gainfully employed grown-ups in one of G. Brian Karas's uproarious illustrations.) Orlean's theme - get a purpose in life, baby! - makes for great humor. Adults live in a practical world; infants do not have immediate practical applications. Nearly three centuries ago, Jonathan Swift made the sharply satirical suggestion in "A Modest Proposal" that hungry Irish families eat their young. Ten years ago, the international press went bonkers over Japanese-invented "Baby Mops," mop-lined garments that take advantage of crawling babies to sweep the floor. These days, the practical baby prize goes to Lisa Brown, creator of the "Baby Be of Use" board book series. Titles include "Baby, Mix Me a Drink," "Baby Fix My Car" and "Baby Do My Banking," which feels particularly timely. It's worth noting that this kind of humor is generally aimed at adults. After all, grown-ups are the ones who have to worry about the practical stuff. Tailoring this theme to a young audience is tough. Sometimes "Lazy Little Loafers" talks to New Yorker-reading parents, not their children. How many 5-year-olds, for example, will respond to the humor of babies who "go out for a three-bottle lunch and get a little tipsy"? "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes," illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, looks at babies around the world. Even when (Mean's prose wavers, Karas's gouache, pencil, acrylic and photographic collages build an appealing cityscape full of hilarious details and baby-coddling New Yorkers. His images also build the big sister's bravado into a narrative journey: the story of a girl who comes to terms with her new baby brother. Babies may be slackers in the workplace, but at least they're cute slackers. In "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes," two beloved picture-book creators - the storyteller Mem Fox and the artist Helen Oxenbury - merge their talents in a win-some look at babies around the world. Fox, whose rhythmic stories beg to be read aloud, doesn't disappoint here. Each verse starts with a rhyming couplet about two babies in different places and ends with a toe-tapping refrain: "Both of these babies,/as everyone knows,/had 10 little fingers/and 10 little toes." This chorus feels like an anthem. The words roll out easy and familiar, as if they'd been handed down to children for decades. Oxenbury brings each pair of babies to life in gentle watercolor illustrations. She paints the places where the babies were born, establishing distance and difference, and then draws them together on a white background. After each pairing, Fox's chorus strikes up on cue. The infants show off their chubby fingers and toes. Then they frolic together, joining a multinational playgroup that grows larger as the book goes on. Diversity is a thorny topic for picture books. It'seasyforwell-intentioned writers to sound preachy, like they're stuck in the Magic Kingdom's "Small World" ride. In "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes," the children come together effortlessly. They gather around to watch the story's finale: a tender, pitch-perfect moment when a mother celebrates the "sweet little child who was mine, all mine." Even the sweetest of babies can harbor a silly streak. The spunky hero of "Such a Silly Baby!" is no exception, stumbling into one goofy situation after the next. During trips to the zoo, the circus, the farm and the rodeo, the baby's absent-minded mother just can't keep up with him. She mistakes a different critter for her son on each outing. Then she takes the animal home instead. From the rodeo, she remembers: "We went to see a Wild West show,/and how this happened I don't know/but there was a hitch/my baby got switched,/and I went home with a buffalo!" This cheerful romp, written by the husband-and-wife team Steffanie and Richard Lorig, features a chant-along litany of animal sounds that gets longer with each new adventure, until the whole noisy menagerie ends up in baby's bedroom. Amanda Shepherd's oil paintings splash bright colors and hijinks across each double-page spread, and she scatters small surprises through the book, dressing Mom in outlandish outfits and finding room for a bug-eyed family dog in each scene. In "Baby! Baby!" a photographer, Vicky Ceelen, takes a quieter approach to the bond between humans and animals. Her wordless board book matches infants with their wild doppelgangers, catching them in strikingly parallel poses. Since very young babies take emotional cues from faces, the pictures that focus on facial expressions should be an especially big hit with them. A smiling infant, photographed from below to loom over the viewer, squares off with a baby giraffe. A napping newborn sprawls across from a sleeping cat in a similar pose. Another baby lies on his stomach, his knees bent, mirroring the posture of a resting toad. Babies and animals have another thing in common. They don't take artistic direction. This collection of moments, which echo each other so well, captures Ceelen's patience and care. Jessica Bruder is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the author of "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Many years in the making, Macaulay's latest work follows the same format as his groundbreaking best-seller, The Way Things Work (1988). Here, Macaulay shifts his focus from modern machinery to the infinitely more complex workings of the human body. The single, holistic subject makes this title far more ambitious than its predecessor, in which each spread was devoted to a particular device. In The Way We Work, every page builds on a previous spread: there is a clear progression from atom to whole organism, but in most cases, readers will need background context to orient themselves as they move through the anatomical subjects, which close with reproduction and birth. As with The Way Things Work, this book's audience will include adults. In fact, older readers who have previously encountered the science concepts are likely to glean the most from the text's brief, technical explanations; students seeking a basic understanding of topics such as cellular reproduction will find this much less accessible. As always, though, Macaulay's artwork is a marvel. From microscopic views to head-to-toe, skeletal structures, the colored-pencil and watercolor images are filled with whimsy. Some pictures are visual metaphors: the respiratory system is shown as a giant, looping roller coaster, for example. Other touches are simply playful and wry: tourists ride a rubber raft through the small intestines; angels support strands of colon that frame a landscape reminiscent of a Renaissance masterpiece. The powerful, illuminating images will ignite curiosity and inspire awe over the magnificent connections that make up the human body.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A Caldecott Medalist and MacArthur Fellow, perhaps best known for his pithily written, illuminatingly illustrated The Way Things Work, Macaulay has devoted himself for years to this illustrated guide aimed at demystifying the workings of the human body. Picture book or not, adults may constitute a significant percentage of its eventual audience. The book is astonishingly comprehensive, beginning with the structure of a cell, traveling through various systems (e.g., respiratory, digestive, etc.) and ending with childbirth. Followers of Macaulay will expect some wit, and it is evident, not just in captions but in throwaways, as in an explanation of taste that acknowledges that smell is "the senior partner." However, the writing is often highly technical ("When a nonsteroid hormone arrives at its target cell, it binds to a receptor protein projecting from the cell's surface"). The full-color drawings may help readers understand the language, but despite the friendly format, with one topic per spread, this is not a book for casual browsing nor for most preteens. On the other hand, motivated teens will feel they've gone to premed heaven. Ages 10-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Getting beyond cathedrals, Macaulay sat in on anatomy classes, surgeries, and autopsies so that he could get the workings of the human body just right. Not for kids only; with a national tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-An ambitious undertaking even for Macaulay, this volume tackles the human body in the author's usual style. Divided into seven sections that connect related systems, the book covers cellular structure at the atomic scale, DNA, and metabolism; respiration and circulation; digestion and elimination; the nervous and endocrine systems; the immune system and fighting infections; the skeleton, musculature, and movement; and reproduction. Macaulay combines a detailed description with frequently whimsical, yet very informative, color diagrams to illustrate the body's functions. At times challenging due to the nature of the topic (e.g., cellular chemistry, nerve impulses), the text incorporates the same subtle humor found in the artwork to enhance the book's appeal without sacrificing its utility. As Macaulay shies away from no topic in his frank, scientific discussions, the result is a very complete description of the "mechanical" aspect of human anatomy that is at once enlightening, entertaining, and a visual delight.-Jeffrey A. French, formerly at Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library, Willowick, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) In a companion volume to The Way Things Work (rev. 3/89), Macaulay turns his prodigious curiosity and formidable talents to the fields of anatomy and physiology. The opening chapter introduces basic concepts of biology and chemistry at the cellular level while subsequent chapters take us through the various systems of the body: respiratory, circulatory, digestive, urinary, nervous, lymphatic, skeletal, muscular, and reproductive. In one illustration these are represented as Rockettes in a cancan line, with an additional system -- the legal system -- represented by a doctor in scrubs who holds a warning sign: "not to be used for surgery." Humor thus occasionally leavens the information, which, though often complex and technical, is clearly and succinctly presented in double-page spreads, accompanied by an illuminating array of illustrations (including diagrams and cross sections), often full of visual metaphors and striking angles. Nonfiction (reference books, in particular) rarely seems to get the respect it deserves, but Macaulay's latest ambitious, encyclopedic work commands it. A substantial glossary and index are appended.From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
