Celebrates family roots as well as the pleasure of cultivating, and sharing, new skills.
A gardener’s son discovers that having a plant of his own is a big responsibility.
Little Manny delights in following his father from yard to yard as he tends to flower gardens. Dad “has a gift for growing jungles in the smallest spaces”—even the apartment they share with Nana. Visiting a garden center one day, Manny asks for a plant of his own and comes home with one bigger than he is—one that wilts and shows signs of distress no matter how much he fusses over it. Time for a trip to the public library, where he reads up on finding the best spot for his plant indoors and proper ways to water and fertilize it. Soon his room is filled with luxuriant foliage. “Mijo,” exclaims his father, “let’s share your gift and take cuttings of your amigo to our neighbors.” The size difference between the brown-skinned, bright-eyed child and his leafy amigo in Rivera’s lush, sunny scenes will amuse young readers, and his success may tempt some to see just how green their thumbs might be. The joy Manny, “the youngest gardener in a long line of gardeners,” feels caring for his plant is infectious, especially once he shares his gift with the racially diverse residents of his Nana’s suddenly lush apartment complex. Manny and his family are cued Latine.
Celebrates family roots as well as the pleasure of cultivating, and sharing, new skills. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9780823454990
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An ideal lead-in to more specific guides to aquarium setup and fish care.
A first introduction to our planet’s finny residents, particularly the decidedly uncommon goldfish.
Preceded by an entire piscatorial ABC that extends over six pages, two children of color lecture an audience of house pets (and readers) about such typical fishy features as scales and gills—properly noting that some fish, like certain eels, have no scales and some, like hagfish, no bony spines. The two then zero in on goldfish, explaining that they are easier to keep at home than tropical fish, originated long ago in China, can recognize the faces of people who bring them food, and with proper care live 25 years. All of this information is presented in a mix of dialogue balloons and single lines of commentary in block letters, accompanying cleanly drawn cartoon illustrations that alternate between a domestic setting and labeled portraits of various fish rendered in fine, exact detail. With easily digestible doses of biological and historical background, common-sense cautionary notes, and a buoyant tone, this is an appealing dive for newly independent readers out to enhance the household menagerie.
An ideal lead-in to more specific guides to aquarium setup and fish care. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943145-15-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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