An animated entry about a common backyard miracle.
A caterpillar’s journey from egg to butterfly…or maybe moth.
“A caterpillar,” McCloskey writes, alongside an inside peek at a specimen with important parts labeled, “is a tube with a stomach.” As impersonal (and true) as that may be, his endearing cartoon images of various kinds of caterpillars will give young readers good cause to join two budding investigators—one light-skinned, the other dark-skinned—and a cat in learning about eggs, instars (or stages), anatomy, cocoons, and chrysalises on the way to witnessing in sequential views a set of marvelous transformations. Nearly every figure in the cleanly drawn scenes, including the cat, offers simple facts and playful comments on the way: “And what do you think comes out…of the chrysalis or the cocoon?” “A big baboon?” “NO!” “A small raccoon?” “NO!” “A dish that ran away with the spoon?” “NO!” Along with pointing out physical differences between butterflies and moths, McCloskey goes on to depict examples of both posed next to their different-looking juvenile forms and closes with a quick summation of the monarch’s migratory life cycle.
An animated entry about a common backyard miracle. (Graphic nonfiction. 5-7)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781662665080
Page Count: 36
Publisher: TOON Books/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
An ideal lead-in to more specific guides to aquarium setup and fish care.
A first introduction to our planet’s finny residents, particularly the decidedly uncommon goldfish.
Preceded by an entire piscatorial ABC that extends over six pages, two children of color lecture an audience of house pets (and readers) about such typical fishy features as scales and gills—properly noting that some fish, like certain eels, have no scales and some, like hagfish, no bony spines. The two then zero in on goldfish, explaining that they are easier to keep at home than tropical fish, originated long ago in China, can recognize the faces of people who bring them food, and with proper care live 25 years. All of this information is presented in a mix of dialogue balloons and single lines of commentary in block letters, accompanying cleanly drawn cartoon illustrations that alternate between a domestic setting and labeled portraits of various fish rendered in fine, exact detail. With easily digestible doses of biological and historical background, common-sense cautionary notes, and a buoyant tone, this is an appealing dive for newly independent readers out to enhance the household menagerie.
An ideal lead-in to more specific guides to aquarium setup and fish care. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943145-15-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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