Sure to cultivate a sense of wonder at an oceanic ecosystem.
Admire the astonishing biodiversity of Australian coral reefs.
Lessac, who has written and illustrated numerous informational books about places around the world, here focuses on her home country. The volume is organized alphabetically, starting with A for Australian reefs (which discusses fringing and patch reefs and includes a map of reefs surrounding Australia) and B for biodiversity, to, finally, Z for zebra seahorses. Each spread includes a topic overview and a few brief paragraphs of further material likely to appeal to young readers. Sometimes, if the alphabet permits, there are two topics on a spread—like parrot fish and peacock shrimp or urchins and violet sea apples. Lessac profiles four different types of sharks whose names begin with W (whale sharks, whitetip reef sharks, walking sharks, and wobbegongs). Her detailed gouache paintings emphasize the colors, patterns, and varieties of the reef’s coral and fish. A final page invites readers to go back and spot 12 different fish species found throughout. The information is accurate, and the lively images reward attention. This title joins a long line of coral reef celebrations, though it stands out for its stress on biodiversity, even occasionally showing how the many species are connected. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Sure to cultivate a sense of wonder at an oceanic ecosystem. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-2830-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
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
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