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THE GREAT LAKES

OUR FRESHWATER TREASURE

A fervent tribute to a treasured natural resource.

An invitation to marvel at, and care for, North America’s largest sources of surface fresh water.

Dug out by a massive ice sheet and just 3,000 or so years old in their current form, the Great Lakes are the “youngest major geological feature on the planet,” as Rosenstock writes. She traces the course of a drop of water as it drains from Lake Superior (the deepest) to each lake in succession and then past Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean—a trip that takes around 300 years and passes more miles of U.S. coastline than the Atlantic and Pacific coasts combined. She also sounds an alarm at the threats posed by habitat destruction, pollution, and invasive species in the wake of the arrival of European settlers. Christoph’s opening scenes of native wildlife and unspoiled natural beauty give way to views of human use, including both a racially diverse group of modern young people drinking, cooking, and bathing and earlier Indigenous residents in canoes, harvesting “only what they needed.” Then, images of clear-cut forests and waters polluted enough to catch fire are followed by a glimpse of environmental protesters led by figures in Native American ceremonial garb. Rosenstock invites readers to do their part by caring for wild places and conserving fresh water, after Great Lakes caretaker Kathleen Smith (Enrolled Member, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community) chimes in with a statement of support in the backmatter.

A fervent tribute to a treasured natural resource. (author’s note, source list) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: March 19, 2024

ISBN: 9780593374351

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024

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BUTT OR FACE?

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

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THE WONDERFUL WISDOM OF ANTS

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.

An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.

Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: March 19, 2024

ISBN: 9780593567784

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

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