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
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A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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