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THE AIRPORT

Name: THE AIRPORT
Author: John Walton
ISBN: 9781684493098

From the Inside Story series

by John Walton ; illustrated by Hannah Abbo ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

Informative and notable for its people-centric approach.

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A simple introduction to many types of airport workers.

Walton, a self-described “aviation journalist,” follows a group of travelers who are diverse in terms of age, race, and ability into one airport and, after a quick, uneventful flight, out another. Along the way he not only introduces an equally diverse cast of employees, from brown-skinned security agent Francine at the luggage scanner to light-skinned immigration official Kevin examining passports at a checkpoint, but also points out different types of airport buildings and sizes of passenger planes, explains how checked luggage is sorted and transported, and ducks behind the scenes to watch brown-skinned chef Safir adding veggies to each preassembled dinner plate; Jasmine, Bradley, and Mia, a diverse trio of technicians, replacing a jet engine; and brown-skinned animal trainer Meena deploying a falcon (named Felix) to chase geese off the runway. It’s an eye-opening tour for young travelers, experienced or otherwise, who think it takes only pilots and flight attendants to get them where they’re going—even if, unlike Lisa Brown’s The Airport Book (2016) and most of the many similar picture books that overtly aim to soothe the anxieties of infrequent fliers, the content focuses more on people than safety procedures. Nearly everyone here is given a name, and within her stylized, screen print–style settings Abbo picks up on that cue by depicting figures with individualized dress and faces. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Informative and notable for its people-centric approach. (glossary, index) (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Pub Date: July 11, 2023

ISBN: 9781684493098

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Neon Squid/Macmillan

Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

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WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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A PLACE FOR RAIN

by Michelle Schaub ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2024

Enticing and eco-friendly.

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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)