Ambitious and engrossing, this field guide may inspire young readers to do some wandering of their own.
While searching for a wandering pup, a capable young narrator leads a tour through the woods, regaling readers with a blend of memories, facts, and nature appreciation.
Cleverly framing the story as a metafictive trek, Eaton creates a narrative as fascinating and dense as the trees in a hemlock forest. The intrepid narrator identifies realistically rendered tree and animal species and shares facts about nearby geology and geography. While the search for Peppermint feels somewhat tangential, information about cool phenomena such as glacial erratics (giant boulders!) will pique and hold kids’ interest. Vivid illustrations with clean black outlines evoke the sunny vibes of a perfect day in the great outdoors, while a crayon-style art-within-art format allows the narrator to share personal stories of her family coming across a coyote protecting her pups or Mom and Dad pulling porcupine quills from Peppermint’s poor nose. These tales have a raw authenticity, which is fitting given that backmatter explains that many stories are drawn from Eaton’s family’s experiences exploring the Adirondack Mountains, where they live. While there’s much to absorb—a plethora of panels, speech bubbles, graphs, and asides from Peppermint—Eaton weaves together the threads into a seamless whole. The family is light-skinned.
Ambitious and engrossing, this field guide may inspire young readers to do some wandering of their own. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780823452088
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that.
Beatrice Zinker is a kinder, gentler Judy Moody.
Beatrice doesn’t want to be fit in a box. Her first word was “WOW,” not “Mom.” She does her best thinking upside down and prefers to dress like a ninja. Like Judy Moody, she has patient parents and a somewhat annoying younger brother. (She also has a perfectly ordinary older sister.) Beatrice spends all summer planning a top-secret spy operation complete with secret codes and a secret language (pig Latin). But on the first day of third grade, her best friend, Lenny (short for Eleanor), shows up in a dress, with a new friend who wants to play veterinarian at recess. Beatrice, essentially a kind if somewhat quirky kid, struggles to see the upside of the situation and ends up with two friends instead of one. Line drawings on almost every spread add to the humor and make the book accessible to readers who might otherwise balk at its 160 pages. Thankfully, the rhymes in the text do not continue past the first chapter. Children will enjoy the frequent puns and Beatrice’s preference for climbing trees and hanging upside down. The story drifts dangerously close to pedantry when Beatrice asks for advice from a grandmotherly neighbor but is saved by likable characters and upside-down cake. Beatrice seems to be white; Lenny’s surname, Santos, suggests that she may be Latina; their school is a diverse one.
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-6738-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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