Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Curiosity's the name of the game whenever the folks from Atlas Obscura are involved, and here they whisk readers around the globe, making stops in fascinating, and often unbelievable, locations. This explorer's atlas touches down in 47 different countries, linking them thematically by their sites and wonders. But before kids antsy with wanderlust are released upon the world, a traveler's checklist offers suggestions for the trips the book contains, from the obvious (sunscreen, camera) to the highly specific (Geiger counter, goat treats). The large-format design makes for roomy double-page spreads that highlight two destinations per country (or state, on occasion)—located on a globe—and four fast facts. Concise, compelling text is printed over full-bleed artistic renderings of the sites. So how does one get from Iceland to Zambia to Antarctica? Well, the blue whale migration near Húsavík, Iceland, is linked to an astonishing fruit bat migration in Zambia's Kasanka National Park. Zambia is also home to Victoria Falls, which, in turn, leads explorers to Antarctica's iron-rich Blood Falls. These connections appear as footnotes that always hold a hook to keep the pages turning. "Alternate Travel Routes" are appended, allowing readers to customize their itineraries by themes, such as "Fire and Ice" and "Subterranean Sojourns." This unique atlas impresses the interconnectedness of the world upon readers, stoking their sense of respect, wonder, and opportunity. Grades 4-8. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
Put the world in their hands
Give these gifts, and see young readers' faces fill with glee. Below, find six picks that encourage hands-on learning, stereotype-free thinking, the power of imagination and more.
Calling all Indiana Jones wannabes: Now there's a kids' version of Atlas Obscura, The Atlas Obscura Explorer's Guide for the World's Most Adventurous Kid, which highlights 100 jaw-dropping places to visit around the globe. Authors Dylan Thuras and Rosemary Mosco chronicle sites like Antarctica's Blood Falls, an underground town in China built by Mao Tse-tung in the 1960s as a military bunker in case of nuclear attack, a small island in Brazil that's home to between 2,000 and 4,000 golden lancehead snakes, and the world's largest model-train setup in Hamburg, Germany. This lively, large-format guide brims with colorful illustrations by Joy Ang, maps and all sorts of geographical excitement.
THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
Children who love to build and create will enjoy Discovery Globe, a step-by-step build-your-own spinning globe kit. With slotted cardboard pieces, wooden dowels and plastic connectors, there's no glue required here, and once assembled, young builders can spin their globes while paging through the accompanying World Explorer's Guide (written by Leon Gray), which is filled with fun facts, a glossary, colorful illustrations from Sarah Edmonds and trivia questions for young globe-trotters.
A DINOSAUR DELIGHT
Learning cool facts about dinosaurs is more fun with Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum. Inside is a "crate" of five fossil exhibits waiting to be unpacked and matched with the correct exhibition. Pretend paleontologists must assemble the color-coded dinosaur fossil pop-ups by slotting the pieces together (again, no glue) and inserting the finished skeletons right into the pages of this fun, fact-filled book, which looks like the museum of a young dinosaur lover's dreams.
A DAILY DOSE OF VERSE
While Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year is a weighty tome, it's filled with a wonderful variety of short poems selected by Fiona Waters, making each day's read a welcome treat. With beloved poems from the likes of Robert Frost ("Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" makes a pitch-perfect appearance in January) and less familiar gems like a translated Mescalero Apache song, this is a celebration of all sorts of weather and its impact on the lives that dwell in biomes such as oceans and forests. Frann Preston-Gannon's big, bold and colorful mixed-media illustrations are what truly give this collection its wow factor. Readers will be drawn right in, whether they're poring over a wild ocean storm in April or a brightly blazing November fire. In the introduction, Nosy Crow publisher Kate Wilson explains that this project grew out of her desire to re-create her own favorite childhood book, which caused her to fall "in love with poetry, with rhyme, with rhythm, with the way that poetry squashed big feelings, big thoughts, big things, into tiny boxes of brilliance for the reader to unpack." Sing a Song of Seasons makes a great read-aloud as well as an enticing treasury for older children.
Illustration from Power to the Princess © 2018 by Julia Bereciartu. Reproduced by permission of Lincoln Children's Books.
PROJECT PRINCESS
There's good reason to be a princess if you're reading Power to the Princess, written by Vita Murrow and illustrated by Julia Bereciartu. Cast away the old stereotypes, and make room for these smart, independent heroines who span the globe, many of them young women of color. Little Red Riding Hood saves her grandmother and helps relocate those hangry wolves, while Rapunzel becomes a creative architect at her firm, A Braid Above, and designs buildings that people like blind Prince Gothel can navigate. While the social consciousness in these stories can be a bit excessive, they're an overdue antidote to those outdated princess roles of yore.
MOWGLI RETURNS
Billed as a companion to Rudyard Kipling's classic novel The Jungle Book, Into the Jungle: Stories for Mowgli contains five original stories about Mowgli, Baloo, Kaa and more. Rest assured, this ain't your Disney Jungle Book, and these tales have a more modern, enlightened outlook as well. They're created by award-winning children's writer Katherine Rundell, who spent her childhood in Africa and Europe and whose prose is exciting and exquisite. Icelandic artist Kristjana S. Williams' plentiful illustrations are colorful collages created with Victorian engravings. A cloth ribbon bookmark takes the appeal of this gorgeous volume over the top.
This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Copyright 2018 BookPage Reviews.ForeWord Magazine Reviews
Aimed at young explorers everywhere, The Atlas Obscura Explorer's Guide for the World's Most Adventurous Kid avoids the usual facts, figures, and tourist sites in favor of fascinating and offbeat wonders, both natural and manmade.
One hundred sites are included, drawn from forty-seven countries and every continent on the planet. In addition to highlighting unusual facts about familiar nations like England and Mexico, the book also introduces less familiar countries like Azerbaijan and Namibia.
Each two-page spread begins by locating its site on the globe and offering a set of interesting facts about the destination country. Excellent descriptions of special attractions run a few hundred words each. Readers are treated as serious travelers and fellow adventurers; introductory pages include a list of things to take along, including sunscreen and a solar charger, while end notes include a list of questions to ask while exploring.
The thesis of the book—that wherever you are, there is something awesome to see—shines through on every page and is emphasized by found attractions in backyard locations from Tennessee to Wyoming. Instead of the Louvre, the museum of choice in Paris is the Musée Fragonard, where skeletons and mummies in lifelike poses are on display. A "Further Reading" list offers choices on topics from dinosaurs to anthropology.
The book is oversize, exceptionally well produced, and visually inviting, with edge-to-edge color on every page. Illustrations by Joy Ang are contemporary, imaginative, and informative. This is a horizon-broadening book that is, above all, fun. Readers are likely to take a new look at their hometowns and can explore remote locales, like Antarctica's Blood Falls, online.
© 2018 Foreword Magazine, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Kirkus Reviews
A worldwide collection of superior oddities. For each of the 47 countries featured here, Thuras and Mosco highlight two strange features, be they weather or natural resources, human artifact or moment in history. Accompanied by Ang's full-color illustrations and a small globe situating the country under examination, Thuras and Mosco have linked each country to the next in line by some common curiosity. Peru's Nazca Lines lead to Australia's Marree Man, for instance, and then Australia's second marvel—Lord Howe Island, where dwells the phasmid, a lobsterlike, hand-long insect—leads to Brazil's Snake Island, which hosts swarms of golden lanceheads ("They sit in trees and ambush migratory birds, injecting flesh-dissolving venom into them") but very few visitors. It is debatable whether a kid has to be adventurous to enjoy many of these unusual features, such as the Antikythera mechanism, which is akin to a 2,000-year-old computer, found in Greece or England's differe nce engine No. 2, a 200-year-old mathematical calculator, but curiosity is both a must and a given. The tone is consistently upbeat but not melodramatic, giving the oddments a sense of reality rather than fantasy—that you could go and witness these phenomena yourself. One delectable sampler of wonders, there for the asking. (Nonfiction. 9-13) Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
This guide to world wonders offers a tour of 100 curious and awe-inspiring destinations within 47 countries and three states in the U.S. Among the natural attractions highlighted are giant crystal formations in the caves of Naica, Mexico; a river in Colombia that turns the colors of the rainbow; and blue whales migrating in the waters off the coast of Iceland. Human-made works of architecture and technology include "Towering Tree Houses" built by minister Horace Burgess in the woods of Tennessee and the stone temples of Mnajdra, Malta. Among the more quirky curiosities is the Coromoto Ice Cream Shop in Venezuela, which scoops a record number of flavors, including spaghetti and sardine. For each locale, the authors include an obscure fact: "In Cambodia, the human head is considered sacred—never pat somebody on the head!" Whether readers are able to visit any of the featured locations, Thuras (a cofounder of