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ICE JOURNEY OF THE POLAR BEAR

A low-key but fervent appeal to care, framed by atmospheric art.

A polar bear has and then cares for two cubs in the rapidly melting Arctic.

Consciousness of climate change is woven throughout this snowy tale. “The ice broke up early again last spring—it always does now,” but a female bear has made her way over the floes to land, feasted on a drowned beluga whale with its tail tangled in a fishing net, dug a den in the snow, and settled down to sleep and wait out the winter. Emerging the following spring with two cubs in tow, she leads the way through unseasonable slush to the still-frozen sea to hunt for seals, and to teach her offspring how. But how will the bears survive, Jenkins asks, when the ice is gone? “I don’t think anybody knows.” In Baker-Smith’s impressionistic scenes, the mother bear, alone at first and then with her playful cubs, pads over dimly lit snowscapes past glimpses of open water loosely strewn with small bits of floating ice, pausing now and again to look out at viewers in silent enquiry. The author ends with further remarks about the causes of climate change and its effects on the bears’ habitat, then closes by urging readers to learn more about the issue and what they can do to help.

A low-key but fervent appeal to care, framed by atmospheric art. (Informational picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025

ISBN: 9781536235715

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024

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THE WONKY DONKEY

Hee haw.

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The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.

In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.

Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: May 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1

Page Count: 26

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018

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THE TOAD

From the Disgusting Critters series

A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor

Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.

The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”

A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: July 5, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Tundra Books

Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016

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