An often engaging and informative tale with a conservationist message.
A young girl longs to see whales on her birthday in Klein’s rhyming picture book.
Abby is thrilled when her father says he’ll be taking her whale watching for her birthday. “Will we see whales?” she wonders in a repeated refrain. She knows that she may only see a few fins, and the foggy weather makes her wonder if she’ll be able to see anything at all. Soon, Abby, her dad, the boat captain, and three older students voyage out to sea. When one student spots a whole group of whales, the fun begins: “One, two, three fins we saw. / Four, five, six galore.” The captain lowers a microphone into the water, and Abby believes the whales are singing her a birthday song. Klein offers Abby’s first-person perspective, weaving in notes about endangered species and human pollution. The scansion is sometimes uneven, and a few lines lack rhymes. However, the overall readability of the text and educational material at the end make it well suited for classrooms. Weber’s full-color illustrations have a painterly feel, with linework that evokes mixed-media compositions. The characters’ faces, which have a range of skin tones, have an almost photographic quality, but the real stars are the realistic whales, especially in a beautiful two-page spread set underwater.
An often engaging and informative tale with a conservationist message.Pub Date: June 27, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-88589-960-4
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character.
One of Boynton's signature characters celebrates Halloween.
It's Halloween time, and Pookie the pig is delighted. Mom helps the little porker pick out the perfect Halloween costume, a process that spans the entire board book. Using an abcb rhyme scheme, Boynton dresses Pookie in a series of cheerful costumes, including a dragon, a bunny, and even a caped superhero. Pookie eventually settles on the holiday classic, a ghost, by way of a bedsheet. Boynton sprinkles in amusing asides to her stanzas as Pookie offers costume commentary ("It's itchy"; "It's hot"; "I feel silly"). Little readers will enjoy the notion of transforming themselves with their own Halloween costumes while reading this book, and a few parents may get some ideas as well. Boynton's clean, sharp illustrations are as good as ever. This is Pookie's first holiday title, but readers will surely welcome more.
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-51233-5
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Robin Corey/Random
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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