An effervescent appreciation of all that trees do and are.
So many reasons to love trees!
Writing in animated free verse that calls urgently to be read aloud, Harrison celebrates a tree’s residents, from bugs that “CRAWL and / CLIMB and / SCURRY up that trunk” to birds that nest or peck out cavities just right for later comers like opossums and raccoons to “SETTLE in. / And maybe / they make / their own babies? / For sure!” Meanwhile, the tree has plenty of “tree business” to conduct, such as making flowers and seeds, breathing out the oxygen that “we BREATHE IN! / For sure,” keeping soil in place, and holding “her families / safe in her STRONG arms” when “storms HOWL / and thunder goes / BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!” As small creatures crawl or flit through leafy boughs above in Cosgrove’s bustling, populous illustrations, two brown-skinned children below blow bubbles or peaceably share a rope swing in the cool shade. “And best of all,” the poem ends, when spring comes round again, new seeds will drop so that “very soon / we will have / a fine new tree. / OH YES!” In a personal afterword, the author describes a certain beloved tree in his yard and suggests that readers might pick one for themselves: “I think trees love it when we love them.”
An effervescent appreciation of all that trees do and are. (bibliography, index) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780823455584
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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