A brimming compendium that inventively mixes facts, poetry, and humor.
In personified mask poems, animals boast about their claims to distinctions like biggest, strongest, and longest-tongued.
Together comprising a guessing game for readers, each short, rhyming verse is accompanied by a teaser illustrating part of the animal’s body. A page turn reveals each animal in its habitat along with its distinguishing “best” and a concise paragraph packed with well-chosen facts. After introducing three of the fastest animals—the cheetah, pronghorn, and peregrine falcon—Ashman spotlights the three-toed sloth in a witty poem called “Slowpoke.” “Although I know / I’m very slow / (the pokiest around), / I take first prize, / Endurance-wise, / For time spent upside down.” This tree-dwelling “SLOWEST Mammal” moves so little that greenish algae grow on its fur, helping to camouflage it from predators. Birds, fish, land and marine mammals, and reptiles are covered, and among renowned greats like the giraffe (“TALLEST animal”) and blue whale (“BIGGEST Animal Ever”), Ashman includes several fascinating, lesser-known species. Casting the white-spotted puffer fish as “BEST Undersea Artist,” she highlights the males’ extraordinary sand-sculpting. Their “amazing circular designs of hills and valleys more than 20 times their body size” are designed to attract a female, who lays her eggs at the center. Varma’s appealing, digitally composed pictures simplify the animals’ salient features within a naturalistic palette of green, blue, and ocher. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A brimming compendium that inventively mixes facts, poetry, and humor. (information on protecting endangered animals, measurements, and mask poems; websites; recommended reading; glossary) (Informational picture book/poetry. 6-9)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781525303500
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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