Well-researched text and winning visuals anchor a fascinating look at life spans.
A detailed examination of the elastic life spans of animals on Earth.
The amount of time that animals have on our planet is interesting but not as interesting as what they do with that time. That’s the key takeaway from an exhaustive, but never exhausting, book about how some animals have but a blink of a life span on Earth (one species of adult mayflies only lives five minutes) while others seem to live forever (the immortal jellyfish appears to regenerate to its birth state in a never-ending cycle). To “discover what these amazing animals make of their time on earth,” Murray looks beyond animals’ lives and deaths to explain how they maximize that time to keep their species going. Some animals, of course, are more fascinating than others, such as the monarch butterfly, whose life span is between two weeks and eight months but in that time makes a continental journey of up to 2,800 miles, exquisitely illustrated and lucidly explained over four pages. While it’s curious that humans are not on the list of 27 species covered, there’s still an abundance of mind-blowing facts, particularly about the longevity of, say, the Greenland shark (400-year life span) or the glass sponge (11,000 years!).
Well-researched text and winning visuals anchor a fascinating look at life spans. (labeled illustration of all the animals covered) (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-2975-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Big Picture Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
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)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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