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Stephen Biesty's Incredible Everything

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BfK No. 110 - May 1998

Cover Story
This issue's cover is from Emma Chichester Clark's picture book, More! Emma Chichester Clark is interviewed by Quentin Blake. Thanks to Andersen Children's Books for their help in producing this cover.

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Stephen Biesty's Incredible Everything

Richard Platt
 Stephen Biesty
(Dorling Kindersley Publishers Ltd)
32pp, NON FICTION, 978-0751356168, RRP £12.99, Hardcover
10-14 Middle/Secondary
Buy "Incredible Everything (Cross Sections)" on Amazon

This is the latest in a series of large format books from illustrator Biesty, including the best-selling Incredible Cross-sections and the brilliant Cross-sections Man o' War. The concept for this book is 'how is it made?', and Biesty's illustrations are harnessed to show the processes involved in making everything from soap to false teeth. It is a nice idea and, as we have come to expect from Biesty, the artwork is consistently brilliant, with all his normal superb eye for detail. It is one of those books that encourages you to pore for ages over every intricacy and discover all kinds of intriguing minutiae about colour matching of false teeth or proving doughnuts. This book is fascinating, informative and attractive --- and yet it does not quite achieve the success of Biesty's earlier books. The problem seems to be partly one of presentation. In many places the quirky humour and human touch that was one of the joys of the previous books (in both the illustrations and Platt's text) seems to have been crowded out, leaving something rather bland and uniformative. This is particularly a problem on the spreds that cover a whole variety of topics. There is also a certain lack of consistency. There are some topics that show a wealth of detail that is clearly the fruit of in-depth research, while others are treated rather cursorily. That said, this is still a wonderful book, and just the big pictures such as Saturn V and the newspaper press make this book worth having.

Reviewer: 
John Farndon
3
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