A valuable look at the roles farmers play in sustaining the lifestyles people enjoy.
From produce and bread to clothing and sweets, the favorite items that farmers bring to tables and homes.
Spot art of diverse families eating table-ready foods are combined with large-scale scenes of farms with people, machinery, and animals producing foods like wheat to make bread, milk for cereal, and fruits and vegetables—an effective juxtaposition of the consumers and producers of ingredients and products people use daily. Peanut butter, rice, wool sweaters and socks, and maple syrup are all items for which readers are encouraged to “thank a farmer.” Farmers, in turn, are thankful for the natural forces and creatures that make their farms work, from soil and sun to bees and trees. The text alternates between a simple sentence indicating an item to thank a farmer for (“berries and / cherries in your bowl”) and a lyrical description of the work that goes into that particular item (“Pinch. / Pluck. / Pull. / Fill the punnet”). Mikai’s warm, textured art is at its strongest here, complementing the more leisurely text with fully detailed scenes that give a strong sense of the realities of labor and the interconnectedness of people at different points in the food production chain. A full spread of backmatter offers more information about the farming methods featured in the book. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A valuable look at the roles farmers play in sustaining the lifestyles people enjoy. (further reading, further viewing, websites) (Informational picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781324015796
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Erupt into applause for this picture book of the first magma-tude.
A deceptively simple, visually appealing, comprehensive explanation of volcanoes.
Gibbons packs an impressive number of facts into this browsable nonfiction picture book. The text begins with the awe of a volcanic eruption: “The ground begins to rumble…ash, hot lava and rock, and gases shoot up into the air.” Diagrams of the Earth’s structural layers—inner and outer core, mantle, and crust—undergird a discussion about why volcanoes occur. Simple maps of the Earth’s seven major tectonic plates show where volcanoes are likeliest to develop. Other spreads with bright, clearly labeled illustrations cover intriguing subtopics: four types of volcanoes and how they erupt; underwater volcanoes; well-known volcanoes and historic volcanic eruptions around the world; how to be safe in the vicinity of a volcano; and the work of scientists studying volcanoes and helping to predict eruptions. A page of eight facts about volcanoes wraps things up. The straightforward, concise prose will be easy for young readers to follow. As always, Gibbons manages to present a great deal of information in a compact form.
Erupt into applause for this picture book of the first magma-tude. (Nonfiction picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4569-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.
A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.
Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5625-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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