Review by New York Times Review
WHAT do you tell a child when a natural disaster darkens the news? "Things like that don't happen here." "The grown-ups in charge have it under control." And when it does happen here, and the grown-ups in charge haven't a clue, there's Plan C: "Scientists are working on it." In "An Inconvenient Truth," "here" is the whole world, and hard-working scientists bring both bad news and good: Humans are changing the atmosphere in ways that will harm the earth, but we can delay or modify the effects if we act soon. That double-edged message has found a large audience as a slide show, a film and a book for adults. Now comes a book version for children 11 and up - or, as the cover puts it, "Adapted for a New Generation." Adapted how? For starters, this book is better organized than the original, with a table of contents, chapter headings and an index - useful features that the adult edition lacked. It is also about 40 percent shorter. Much of what has disappeared is Gore himself; his autobiographical musings are gone, replaced by a brief introduction. Fair enough: Readers who barely remember the 2000 election will care more about Gore's message than about the personal journey that led him to spread it. What remains is most of the "good parts" of the movie: enough geoscience to explain the basics of climate change, and a travelogue of parts of the world where global warming either poses a threat or (Gore suggests) has already taken hold. The beleaguered polar bears are here. So are shrinking glaciers in Switzerland and atop Mount Kilimanjaro, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and deteriorating coral reefs. The main culprit is carbon dioxide; the solution, a grab bag of technical fixes. "We have everything we need to begin solving the climate crisis," the book concludes hopefully. The science, as far as it goes, is well supported, but some foibles remain from the film. Gore pegs recent hot spells and extreme weather like Hurricane Katrina to global warming a lot more confidently than most climate scientists are ready to do. Many experts suspect that the recent run of hot summers is due to global warming combined with an upward swing in natural temperature fluctuations. A swing back could cool things off for a while, even as overall warming continues. Gore is also mighty optimistic about the ease of reining in humanity's appetite for carbon-spewing combustion. The big question, however, is whether the book's intended audience still needs it. The DVD of the film is required viewing in many schools. Politicians, news editors and curriculum developers are piling onto the green bandwagon. The next generation has plenty of inspiration; what it needs now is nuts-and-bolts information for school reports and debates. Who is doing the science, and where and how? How do researchers analyze satellite data and computer models? What is likely to happen in the near future? This book doesn't tackle those questions, but someone must. Information abounds in Joseph B. Treaster's book "Hurricane Force," but it goes down so smoothly you won't notice. The story starts in the path of Hurricane Katrina, which Treaster covered in August 2005 as a correspondent for The New York Times and witnessed as it struck downtown New Orleans. "I watched as a dangling traffic light shot across an intersection like a bullet pass, then swung back on its tether," he writes. "Nearby, windows shattered and glass sprayed down on the sidewalk like lethal snow." A Florida native and a veteran of a dozen hurricanes, Treaster knows his subject. He explains how hurricanes originate as fragile combinations of swirling, moist air and warm ocean water, how they change character on coming ashore, what makes them so capricious and deadly and, finally, how disaster agencies plan for their arrival. Scientists are the heroes of the early chapters. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service track storms from command posts inside concrete bunkers. Some fly straight into them to drop instrument canisters, crossing into the eye of the hurricane - "a place of powerful beauty," as one researcher describes it. Later, the spotlight shifts to emergency planners, aid workers and victims. Treaster also tells his exciting "how I got the story" story: driving into New Orleans on the eve of the storm's landfall, shadowing the police chief, listening to overwhelmed 911 operators and interviewing residents as the city flooded. The dozens of photographs and some well-chosen maps mesh with the text. There are no how-it-works diagrams, but the writing is so vivid that readers won't miss them. A hurricane is "a roaring natural turbine" wrapped around "a flexing double column of air - like a rumpled sleeve within a rumpled sleeve." Its path over land zigzags "in a windshield-wiper effect." It's no surprise that Treaster's annotated list of references (a welcome extra) includes fiction by Joseph Conrad and Jack London. Readers will finish this book fascinated but probably content to keep their distance. Despite better forecasts and hurricane-proof building techniques, Treaster makes it clear that when a big storm wheels ashore, the best place to be is somewhere else. "Unless I'm reporting on a storm," he concludes, "you won't find me trying to reason with hurricane season." Robert Coontz is a deputy news editor at Science and a columnist for the children's magazine Muse.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
In this youth-focused adaptation of Gore's 2006 adult book and Oscar-winning documentary, Gore and O'Connor (credited as "adaptor") distill the material, creating an eye-opening story that targets kids' concerns. Gone are the political passages that begin with phrases such as "During the Clinton-Gore years . . ." The language is basic-- vector in the adult book becomes "life forms that can carry"--and offers clear definitions of such terms as greenhouse gases and persuasive, accessible arguments for how the climate crisis has developed and what can be done to address it. The sturdy pages are filled with color photographs and charts, and the images are riveting. Like the pictures, the personal stories bring the facts close, and in addition to the urgent science, Gore's book shows how mentors can change lives. In his moving introduction, Gore speaks about how reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring \b0 (1962) when he was 14 years old shocked him into environmental awareness, which developed further during his studies with pioneering scientist Dr. Roger Revelle at Harvard. Gore's research continues to raise controversy, but few, if any, books for youth offer such a dynamic look at the climate issues threatening our planet. --Gillian Engberg Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Much as Eric Schlosser revised his Fast Food Nation findings into the child-centered Chew on This, Gore produces a new edition of An Inconvenient Truth, "adapted for a new generation." "Earth is sometimes called the Goldilocks planet-neither too hot like Venus with its thick poisonous atmosphere nor too cold like Mars," Gore writes, then delivers resounding evidence that things are no longer just right. Captioned color photos compare thriving coral to bleached reefs-victims of rising ocean temperatures and pollution-and place images of former glaciers side-by-side with today's snowless plains or lakes. Where some images celebrate astronauts' views of the Earth from space, others show a refuse dump in Mexico City and Tokyo's astonishing urban sprawl; one startling snapshot shows dull brown, clearcut land in Haiti ("98 percent of their forests have been cut down") abutting the still-green, forested Dominican Republic. Although lighter on textual explication of climate change, this children's text hews closely to the original and to Gore's famous slide show; that said, the urgency of conservation fails to come across in the pedestrian prose, which might fail to inspire its audience. For all his subject's vital importance, Gore provides just two brief pages on ways to "Take Action." Readers will want to browse the amazing pictures, but will have to look elsewhere for ideas on making a difference. Ages 11-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-This young readers' version of the recent documentary film's companion adult volume cuts the page count by about a third but preserves the original's cogent message and many of its striking visuals. After explaining that his interest in the environment predates even his mother's reading of Silent Spring aloud to him as a teenager, Gore proceeds to document steeply rising carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, and then to link that to accelerating changes in temperature and precipitation patterns worldwide. Using easy-to-grasp graphics and revealing before-and-after photos, he shows how glaciers and ice shelves are disappearing all over the globe with alarming speed, pointing to profound climate changes and increased danger from rising sea levels in the near future. O'Connor rephrases Gore's arguments in briefer, simpler language without compromising their flow, plainly intending to disturb readers rather than frighten them. He writes measured, matter-of-fact prose, letting facts and trends speak for themselves-but, suggesting that "what happens locally has worldwide consequences," he closes with the assertion that we will all have to "change the way we live our lives." Like the film, this title may leave readers to look elsewhere for both documentation and for specific plans of action, but as an appeal to reason it's as polished and persuasive as it can be.-John Peters, New York Public Library (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) In this work adapted from his documentary film and adult book of the same name, Gore outlines the present effects of global warming on the planet and predicts dire future effects. Stunning graphs and charts display complicated material and -- with their straightforward legends, uncluttered patterns, bold colors, and varying designs -- serve as models of clarity for transmitting scientific information. Unfortunately, the text is less successful. Throughout the book, Gore makes statements without attribution or proof. Undocumented vagaries such as ""Some scientists think global warming could potentially disrupt the workings of [the Global Ocean] conveyor belt, with disastrous consequences to the climate worldwide"" reduce science to anecdote. Although some documentation appears on the website (www.climatecrisis.net, casually referenced on the last text page of the book and the back flap), finding these sources is awkward. Yes, Gore's done his homework, but the absence of source notes for many of his statements gives youngsters few opportunities to see how they can do their own scholarship. With image credits and an index. Copryight 2007 of The Horn Book, Inc. All rights reserved. (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.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A bestselling tie-in book, now adapted for middle- and high-school readers by Jane O'Connor, accompanied the award-winning documentary film about global warming, from Vice President Gore. Gore has contributed a new introduction, and a new table of contents clarifies his argument. Most of the illustrations have been retained. Beginning with an introduction to the issue, the evidence is presented in striking then-and-now pictures, simple graphs and straightforward, clearly written text. Some of the logic of individual bits of his original presentation has been lost in the simplification, but readers are likely to be familiar with his examples and the potential consequences: storms, floods, droughts, changes at the poles and in the oceans, public-health issues and even the rhythm of the seasons. Gore points out the effects of the population explosion and political denial but holds out hope that this crisis can also provide an opportunity for change. Four simple action steps are suggested, and readers are referred to the website from the film for further information. Multiple copies should be in every school and library. (acknowledgements, credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.