Certain to cultivate a love of nature in all who pick it up.
An aptly named child proves that anyone, anywhere, can be a birder.
Sparrow, a Black girl with her hair in twists, lives in a bustling town filled with noises such as car horns and barking dogs, but the town still has plenty of birds to observe. She heads outside, carrying a sketch pad and crayons, and “uses her eyes and ears.” She notices the ways different species move (“Thrashers hide in the bushes. Robins hop on the ground”), their colors (“Mourning doves are brown and gray”), and their different songs. Burgess includes birds that are reasonably common in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. and Canada. The backmatter concludes with information about each of the 17 species that Sparrow sees, including size, color, habitat, and diet, as might be found in a birding guidebook. Anthony’s lively digital illustrations range from vignettes to double-page spreads. The book includes a nice variety, from close-ups to more distant scenes featuring a wide-eyed, animated child watching through her binoculars or mimicking the birds’ behaviors. Realistically, several images feature a yellow bird that never does get identified. In an author’s note, Burgess, an ornithologist, describes growing up in the suburbs, observing the birds around her; she stresses that readers need not live in a rural environment to become birders. Amid recent efforts to diversify bird-watching, this inviting work is especially welcome.
Certain to cultivate a love of nature in all who pick it up. (bird-watching tips, resources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316307222
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Hee haw.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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