A simple, matter-of-fact reminder that we are all connected.
An introduction to LUCA, the “squishy blob” that sits at the end of the deepest root of the family tree that includes every living thing.
What with falling meteorites, erupting volcanoes, and violent weather, the Earth of over 3 billion years ago was, Krossing writes with considerable understatement, an “unfriendly world”—but it was then that our Last Universal Common Ancestor “formed from / the dust of exploded stars.” It had no legs, arms, eyes, mouth, or stomach, but because it would divide, grow, and change to develop all those and more, it connects us to all the “mushrooms and moss, / fir trees and ferns, / bacteria and bedbugs, / sea stars and sharks, / lizards and lions” on our planet. Lo gives this narrative a cozy, intimate feeling with a quick progression of broadly brushed scenes featuring figures from an amorphous glob with a few indistinct organelles inside through the appearance of low green plants and orange dinosaurs to a final view of a family of brown-skinned human campers smiling up at swirling northern lights and stars. Indeed, the author and the illustrator suggest at the end, the miracle that is us could well be repeated on another world. Readers after a fuller account of evolution might pair this with the likes of Lisa Westberg Peters’ Our Family Tree (2003), illustrated by Lauren Stringer; those wondering how scientists deduced LUCA’s existence and nature will find details in an afterword in a smaller type and a source list at the end. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A simple, matter-of-fact reminder that we are all connected. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77147-445-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.
An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.
Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567784
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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