A fine introduction for whale aficionados and a clarion call for climate change awareness.
Meet a beautiful denizen of the sea.
Bowhead whales are the longest-living mammals on Earth—they can live for over 200 years—and spend their entire, mostly solitary, lives in and around the Arctic. This well-written nonfiction title provides an up-close–and-personal look at one endearing female bowhead, drawing young readers in and evoking empathy. Boersma and Pyenson recount the various perils she faces, including predators and changes to her habitat due to technological advances and climate change. The economical text describes the majestic creature’s characteristics and behavior and incrementally tracks her development from infancy to adulthood through four stages, each spanning 50 years. The book’s warm portrayal of the very vocal whale is occasionally slightly anthropomorphic, but this enhances its appeal to the young target audience, as does the liberal use of evocative onomatopoeic words, rendered in large capitals. The pleasant realistic illustrations, created with watercolor, gouache, and colored inks and finished digitally, are soft and lively and appropriately emphasize blues, whites, and the vastness of the ocean. Sharp-eyed readers will note various Arctic animals who share the bowhead’s habitat. Details in the scenery, both on land and at sea, reflect the various historical periods. Excellent backmatter material includes additional facts about bowheads and information about other Arctic creatures, the Northwest Passage, and Inuit people in the Arctic. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A fine introduction for whale aficionados and a clarion call for climate change awareness. (author's note) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-80302-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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