Quirky, informative, and far from soporific.
The first page warns readers to quiet down since the animals in the book are sleepy and need to rest. A few more brief sentences conversationally introduce the book’s premise. However, the book is far from a bedtime story. Even that initial page sports vividly colored sleepy animals, and they are yawning and stretching over a background that is several shades brighter than lavender. The facing page sets up a pleasant, repeating pattern. Instead of the full bleed of the verso, stark white frames a roughly hewn oblong, within which a cartoon child snuggles in a bedroom in solid hues of cool-palette colors. “While you cover yourself with a blanket…” begins the litany, “…an otter wraps itself in seaweed,” proclaims black print over a background of rippling blues upon the page turn. Three seaweed-swaddled sea otters drift below a short, informative paragraph that compares the use of the seaweed to both a blanket and a boat’s anchor. The text’s tone is lighthearted, with humorous word choices conveying fascinating facts. How imaginative to compare a child pulling on pajamas to a parrotfish nightly “burping up” its protective coating of slime! Upbeat graphics provide a wide range of human diversity, including one White child who uses a wheelchair and a family that appears to be multiracial.
Quirky, informative, and far from soporific. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77147-404-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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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