Brenner shows young readers two different ways of looking at nature. By the Sea focuses on a tide pool, a place “no bigger than a bathtub,” and invites the reader to examine its occupants closely. When the tide brings in plankton-laden seawater, the mussels and barnacles eat. But then a sea star eats a mussel, an anemone eats a snail, and a hermit crab jumps into the empty snail shell the anemone discarded. Very quickly and simply, readers understand how everything in the pool is related. If something upsets the pool’s equilibrium, “[it] would still be a tide pool, but it would change”—a complicated concept that invites further thought. In a Tree, however, shows how a small space can evolve over a much greater span of time. First a bear scratches a tree; timber beetles burrow into the cut in the bark; woodpeckers feasting on beetles help to create a hole; squirrels move in, then bluebirds. Eventually the tree dies and falls, but the hole remains an animal home. The two share a spare, poetic language, giving just enough information. Leonard’s bright illustrations match the text well—detailed, but not overly so, with a good sense of movement and life. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-688-17180-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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