Beautifully brilliant in its simplicity.
An exploration of the spaces separating words, outer space, and everything in between.
Following a humongous or—depending on perspective—tiny ladybug, readers are led through explanations of different meanings for the word space. Typographical, physical, and chronological spaces are some of the concepts probed in the story. Although space is often visually represented in concrete images, such as the interstices between spilled, uncontained noodles or the gap between teeth, abstract concepts are also transmitted, like the disgust one might feel when there is no space separating pickles and pudding, causing flavors to combine, or the built-up excitement created by a pause, or space, between moments. Readers will be enticed to keep revisiting the book, as it turns into a seek-and-find challenge when the pages are turned. Characters, patterns, and sections of previous spreads appear multiple times from different perspectives, leading readers to continually flip back and forth to locate the original image and to piece the final image together. Masterful page breaks create anticipation to see what is coming in the next spread, the first part of a truncated sentence often begging readers to turn the page to explore its resolution. The simplicity of Nichols’ illustrations are reminiscent of Christian Robinson’s and, with a diverse cast of characters—including both characters of color and disabled characters—evoke joy and communicate movement, life, and complex concepts.
Beautifully brilliant in its simplicity. (Informational picture book. 4–7)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-328-80147-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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