Gibbons’ lovely botanical renderings are ill-served by the effort to cover too much for the format.
A very busy informational picture book for preschool and primary grades.
There is almost too much information in this 32-page compendium. Following a generic one-line introduction, Gibbons launches into discussions of climate, how and where plants grow (from seeds, from bulbs, and on vines, bushes, and trees), habitats, environment, annuals, perennials. This occupies 10 pages. Another 10 pages explain the parts of a flower as well as pollination and propagation. “How to Grow a Garden” fills six pages, starting with “Spring” and including pages for “Summer” and “Fall” (but no Winter). Finally, Gibbons discusses community gardens, greenhouses, and florists before a concluding page with thumbnail drawings of “Birthday Flowers as well as assorted “Flower Facts”—curiosities that may intrigue readers patient enough to find them. The large, 10-inch-square trim, and the attractive, detailed, and accurate watercolor-and–colored-pencil illustrations outlined in black ink within, will attract picture-book readers, but the cramped and cluttered layout may be off-putting. At the same time, the absence of a table of contents or index limits its utility for older students’ research. Gibbons’ fans may be disappointed by the overreach.
Gibbons’ lovely botanical renderings are ill-served by the effort to cover too much for the format. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3787-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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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