A clever and inclusive bedtime book about science and possibility.
Budding scientists bed down.
It’s time to go to sleep, and kids all over the neighborhood are exhausted. Each page of this book features a different, racially diverse child climbing into bed in a room decorated according to their preferred STEM field. A dark-skinned, curly-haired tot, for example, is a sleepy budding astronomer who sits cross-legged on a quilt decorated with planets under posters showing the moon’s phases. A lighter-skinned child wearing a hearing aid is a botanist who checks their potted plants before bedding down under posters of Thomas Meehan and George Washington Carver. A beige-skinned physicist who uses a wheelchair falls asleep next to a poster of Stephen Hawking and beneath a blanket patterned with positive and negative ions. An Asian child in a pair of orange pajamas pulls out a bedroll in a room dedicated to anthropology. The rhyming text cleverly weaves context clues about each branch of science into the couplets, and the simple, clear language is fun and easy to read. The cartoon illustrations are packed with details, including a poster that declares, “Climate Change is Happening Right Now” in the room of meteorologist twins, and numerous photos of diverse scientists and activists including Gabriel Fahrenheit, Wangari Maathai, and Mary Anning. Children and adults alike will discover something new with each reading.
A clever and inclusive bedtime book about science and possibility. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-58089-934-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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