A vision of STEM education as a free-wheeling rumpus.
In this simple concept book, eager kitties scramble to design and build a wind-driven robot.
Confronted with a table full of craft supplies, the “twitchy team” of furballs scrambles to gather cardboard boxes, cones, tubes, and wheels and then assemble the “motley mix of materials” into a working robot. In the lively cartoon illustrations, Harney’s cute, big-eyed kittens dangle various items, some of which are outlined in red and labeled “square,” “rectangle,” “circle,” or “triangle,” and then try to fit them together in various ways. Their first effort results in a jumbled, nonfunctional “CATawampus,” but a bit of practical reconstruction that adds rollers to the bottom and a triangular sail on the top leads to a zooming “robot rumpus.” It all culminates in a mighty “Crash!” that leaves furry students and bits of bot scattered hither and yon. “But does it matter? NO! These creators are ready to…turn robot into rocket!” In an afterword that seems to be addressed as much to slightly older readers as the “out-of-the-box” teachers to whom this outing is dedicated, the author explains the differences between two- and three-dimensional shapes; among suggestions for follow-up activities, she also provides instructions for a potato battery—a useful but somewhat random inclusion.
A vision of STEM education as a free-wheeling rumpus. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781635927986
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Astra Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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