Seventeen unusual animals from Australia are introduced with a brief text and a handsome, full-color, close-up photograph. Like Arnold’s other titles, African Animals and South American Animals, this one arranges animals by habitat, focusing on animals of the forest, grasslands, desert, and coast. A map in each section shows where each habitat occurs on the continent. Some very odd creatures are presented, including koalas, possums, gliders, quolls, Tasmanian devils, platypuses, echidnas, kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, snakes, bilbies, and penguins. Children will relish the glossy, full-color photographs, and the text will provide a tantalizing introduction, but young researchers will need to look elsewhere for detailed information. No sources are given. The author does not indicate the size of most animals, and the “rabbit-sized” bilbies and the wombat are shown larger that the six-foot, gray kangaroo. Since no scientific names are given, the reader may search unsuccessfully for the thorny devil or quoll. And the popular kookaburra appears in a photograph but nowhere in the text. Handsome for browsing, but limited for school assignments and research. (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-16766-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Having put together a band with renowned cousin Duck Ellington and singer “Bee” Holiday, Rooster’s chances sure look...
Winning actually isn’t everything, as jazz-happy Rooster learns when he goes up against the legendary likes of Mules Davis and Ella Finchgerald at the barnyard talent show.
Having put together a band with renowned cousin Duck Ellington and singer “Bee” Holiday, Rooster’s chances sure look good—particularly after his “ ‘Hen from Ipanema’ [makes] / the barnyard chickies swoon.”—but in the end the competition is just too stiff. No matter: A compliment from cool Mules and the conviction that he still has the world’s best band soon puts the strut back in his stride. Alexander’s versifying isn’t always in tune (“So, he went to see his cousin, / a pianist of great fame…”), and despite his moniker Rooster plays an electric bass in Bower’s canted country scenes. Children are unlikely to get most of the jokes liberally sprinkled through the text, of course, so the adults sharing it with them should be ready to consult the backmatter, which consists of closing notes on jazz’s instruments, history and best-known musicians.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58536-688-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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