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THE POWER OF SNOW

Name: THE POWER OF SNOW
Author: Bob Raczka
ISBN: 9781728450919

by Bob Raczka ; illustrated by Bryony Clarkson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2023

Cool! Snow really has the power to wow—and teaches math, too.

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Snow descends mathematically.

We intuitively understand that when snow falls, huge numbers of snowflakes combine to form a white cover. This book demonstrates that there’s also a mathematical way to regard snowfall: Consider snowflakes falling in pairs, then multiply them exponentially. The book starts with two snowflakes, which increase in number over the course of the story. At the bottom of each page, a caption shows the base number 2 with an exponent—for instance, on the page labeled “Eight flakes twirl,” the caption reads “2³ = 2 to the third power / 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.” It all culminates with 2 to the 14th power, or 16,384 snowflakes. The correct number of snowflakes is depicted on each page, and when the numbers are manageable, readers may actually count them in the artwork. The text is delivered in simple, lively verse. Younger kids likely won’t get the math, not having learned multiplication yet, but they’ll appreciate fun vocabulary like swoosh and sashay. Older kids who’ve studied multiplication will understand more and appreciate learning how to multiply the same number repeatedly. The lush, textured illustrations, created from cut pieces of painted-paper collage, then assembled digitally, capture nature at its wintry best. Two children—one light-skinned, one brown-skinned—are depicted playing in the snow. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Cool! Snow really has the power to wow—and teaches math, too. (what is an exponent?, illustrator’s note) (Informational picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023

ISBN: 9781728450919

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner

Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU ARE A STORY
by Bob Raczka ; illustrated by Kristen Howdeshell & Kevin Howdeshell

- BOOK REVIEW
THE POET OF PINEY WOODS
by Bob Raczka ; illustrated by Kristen Howdeshell & Kevin Howdeshell

- BOOK REVIEW
BEWARE!
by Bob Raczka ; illustrated by Larry Day

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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ANIMAL ARCHITECTS

From the Amazing Animals series

by Amy Cherrix ; illustrated by Chris Sasaki ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2021

An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.

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A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.

Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)