Very simple, a little bland, but a good and read-aloud-ready way of introducing an important natural process.
A rhymed climb up a food chain.
Shaffer and Neal follow a series of creatures: plants that create their own food with the help of the “glorious, life-giving, fiery sun,” a cricket that munches on grass, a mouse that eats the cricket, a red milk snake that swallows the mouse, a red hawk that hunts the mouse, a fox that pounces on the hawk, and, finally, a bear that makes a meal out of the fox. More bloodthirsty young readers may be disappointed that both author and illustrator largely leave out the CRUNCH! part of this natural progression—in the illustrations, only the foliage suffers, as none of the featured eaters are shown actually chowing down on animal prey, and the language is likewise abstract. The general concept is clear enough, though, and in both the cumulative rhyme and the nature notes at the end, Shaffer complements Neal’s pettable-looking creature cast with easily digestible descriptions of behaviors and diets. The author properly acknowledges that this particular chain “occurs in a temperate deciduous forest,” and if she never explicitly introduces the more complicated (and accurate) notion of food webs, she does finish off her narrative by noting that “some days” the fox gets away, whereupon the “hungry black bear / munches flowers and seeds… / all that she needs.”
Very simple, a little bland, but a good and read-aloud-ready way of introducing an important natural process. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593565520
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap.
Budding naturalists who dug We Dig Worms! (2015) will, well, coo over this similarly enlightening accolade.
A curmudgeonly park visitor’s “They’re RATS with wings!” sparks spirited rejoinders from a racially diverse flock of children wearing full-body bird outfits, who swoop down to deliver a mess of pigeon facts. Along with being related to the dodo, “rock doves” fly faster than a car, mate for life, have been crossbred into all sorts of “fancies,” inspired Pablo Picasso to name his daughter “Paloma” in their honor, can be eaten (“Tastes like chicken”), and, like penguins and flamingos, create “pigeon milk” in their crops for their hatchlings. Painted on light blue art paper—“the kind,” writes McCloskey in his afterword, “used by Picasso”—expertly depicted pigeons of diverse breeds common and fancy strut their stuff, with views of the children and other wild creatures, plus occasional helpful labels, interspersed. In the chastened parkgoer’s eyes, as in those of the newly independent readers to whom this is aimed, the often maligned birds are “wonderful.” Cue a fresh set of costumed children on the final page, gearing up to set him straight on squirrels.
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap. (Graphic informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-935179-93-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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