A timely invitation to participate in raising energy consciousness.
Once a year, all over the world, people celebrate the electricity we use in our daily lives by turning off lights in homes, offices, and famous monuments for a single Earth Hour.
In time for next spring’s Earth Hour, March 29, 2020, this admirable debut offers both the what and the why. Luu’s cheery illustrations emphasize the worldwide nature of this event. The book begins with vignettes: examples of electricity use, including cozy home scenes, city streets, and the lit-up Earth as seen from space. Next, full pages and double-page spreads show illuminated buildings, cities, and internationally recognizable monuments at night. The scenes then move to the interior: bathtime, family games, and lights out. The international scenes reappear, without artificial light. The next to the last spread shows a single sleeping child (echoing Clement Hurd’s “great, green room”); the final one shows people of many colors and ethnicities (one using a wheelchair) carrying candles and lanterns on a starlit night: “Alone we are one… // …but together we have power. / United, we are Earth Hour.” Heffernan’s simple narrative runs across the pages, tying the story together. Her author’s note recalls her surprise at seeing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge go suddenly dark in honor of Earth Hour a few years ago, and a short final note connects energy use to global climate change.
A timely invitation to participate in raising energy consciousness. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-58089-942-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer.
Rotner follows up her celebrations of spring and autumn with this look at all things winter.
Beginning with the signs that winter is coming—bare trees, shorter days, colder temperatures—Rotner eases readers into the season. People light fires and sing songs on the solstice, trees and plants stop growing, and shadows grow long. Ice starts to form on bodies of water and windows. When the snow flies, the fun begins—bundle up and then build forts, make snowballs and snowmen (with eyebrows!), sled, ski (nordic is pictured), skate, snowshoe, snowboard, drink hot chocolate. Animals adapt to the cold as well. “Birds grow more feathers” (there’s nothing about fluffing and air insulation) and mammals, more hair. They have to search for food, and Rotner discusses how many make or find shelter, slow down, hibernate, or go underground or underwater to stay warm. One page talks about celebrating holidays with lights and decorations. The photos show a lit menorah, an outdoor deciduous tree covered in huge Christmas bulbs, a girl next to a Chinese dragon head, a boy with lit luminarias, and some fireworks. The final spread shows signs of the season’s shift to spring. Rotner’s photos, as always, are a big draw. The children are a marvelous mix of cultures and races, and all show their clear delight with winter.
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3976-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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