Engaging content and format, despite a few rough edges.
Split-page illustrations offer views of flora and fauna in six habitats worldwide.
Taking the same layered approach as Pang’s Seasons (2021), illustrated by Clover Robin, this outing transports young wildlife lovers from the Namib Desert to deep waters off the Australian coast and points between. The journey begins in the Borneo rain forest with quick descriptive lines and spot images of four or five animals and plants that reside at each level from canopy to ground, opposite four successively wider outdoor settings in which the animals pose. A look at the ocean takes readers from the area just above the water to the sunlit zone to the twilight zone and, finally, to the deep sea. The author neglects to identify many of the animals on display in the art as she goes, and her claim that a slipper flower native to the Andes was “discovered” by Charles Darwin could have been better phrased. Still, if some of Lundie’s flora and fauna seem to float over the backgrounds, everything is easily recognizable, and if her visual transitions between the layered partial pages aren’t consistently smooth, at least she tries to keep the format from being just a perfunctory gimmick. Armchair travelers will enjoy each luxuriantly detailed stop and will agree with the author that they all “connect together into one amazing home.”
Engaging content and format, despite a few rough edges. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781944530419
Page Count: 40
Publisher: 360 Degrees
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
Markle invites children to picture themselves living in the homes of 11 wild animals.
As in previous entries in the series, McWilliam’s illustrations of a diverse cast of young people fancifully imitating wild creatures are paired with close-up photos of each animal in a like natural setting. The left side of one spread includes a photo of a black bear nestling in a cozy winter den, while the right side features an image of a human one cuddled up with a bear. On another spread, opposite a photo of honeybees tending to newly hatched offspring, a human “larva” lounges at ease in a honeycomb cell, game controller in hand, as insect attendants dish up goodies. A child with an eye patch reclines on an orb weaver spider’s web, while another wearing a head scarf constructs a castle in a subterranean chamber with help from mound-building termites. Markle adds simple remarks about each type of den, nest, or burrow and basic facts about its typical residents, then closes with a reassuring reminder to readers that they don’t have to live as animals do, because they will “always live where people live.” A select gallery of traditional homes, from igloo and yurt to mudhif, follows a final view of the young cast waving from a variety of differently styled windows.
Another playful imagination-stretcher. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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