bookshelf

AS LARGE AS LIFE

Name: AS LARGE AS LIFE
Author: Jonny Marx
ISBN: 978-1-944530-34-1

THE SCALE OF CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL, SHORT AND TALL

by Jonny Marx ; illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2021

Browsers will come away with plenty of rousing facts to share plus a better sense of the relative sizes of many animals.

bookshelf

A menagerie of wild animals from diverse locales and habitats, drawn to scale within each spread.

Gadding about seemingly arbitrarily from the Galápagos Islands to the Black Forest, ocean deeps to coral reefs, this lap-sized worldwide tour gathers around 250 creatures (or, rarely, plants) from anopheles mosquito to blue whale. They appear, about a dozen or so per spread, with human figures, hands, or footprints visible in each scene for comparison. Prabhat’s painted portraits, stylized but recognizable, share space in their natural settings with pithy comments from Marx—mostly on point, though one claim that “without flies, our planet would be covered in rotting waste!” is more histrionic than strictly accurate, and another that phytoplankton eat krill is exactly backward (possibly due to a typo). Still, all the animals are identified, and the author’s many references to predation, poisons, and poop (“jackrabbits,” readers learn, “are coprophagic”), not to mention memorable details like the “hardened buttocks” of wombats, make it really hard to skip the commentary…even the occasional passages semilegibly printed black on purple. There’s no index, but a foldout poster (not seen) offers a complete group shot, including one of the racially diverse cast of young naturalists who put in appearances throughout.

Browsers will come away with plenty of rousing facts to share plus a better sense of the relative sizes of many animals. (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-944530-34-1

Page Count: 64

Publisher: 360 Degrees

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
AGE OF THE DINOSAURS
by Jonny Marx ; illustrated by Christiane Engel

- BOOK REVIEW
EXPLORE THE MEADOW
by Jonny Marx ; illustrated by Christiane Engel

- BOOK REVIEW
MY PEEKABOO THINGS THAT GO
by Jonny Marx ; illustrated by Yi-Hsuan Wu

bookshelf

BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

bookshelf

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

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

bookshelf

WHAT IF YOU HAD AN ANIMAL HOME!?

From the What if You Had . . .? series

by Sandra Markle ; illustrated by Howard McWilliam ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2024

Another playful imagination-stretcher.

bookshelf

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)