A sweet, informative journey.
As the seasons change, so does the oak tree—and the animals who live in, on, and beneath it.
“The big, old oak tree stands tall near the empty house.…Many animals have lived here.” This picture book needs plenty of time for reading the text and looking carefully and deeply at the richly colored art. The illustrations are deceptively simple—primitive and childlike, using crayons among other media—but the details go beyond complementing the scientific text. For example, astute readers will see the “sold” sign on the empty house on the verdant, summery initial page. Successive, alternating double-page spreads show first the tree and house on the verso, with brief text that describes seasonal changes in the tree, then present what’s happening at the same time in the life cycles of six winsome animals: raccoon, acorn weevil, opossum, gray squirrel, blue jay, chipmunk. All, even the weevils, are depicted with plenty of personality. With each season, each animal peers out from a frame with several sentences about the animal’s behavior or appearance. Simple sentences teach new vocabulary through context. By springtime, baby animals have joined several of the inhabitants. Extra joy comes from noticing an interracial family of human beings who move in on the autumn pages, peer out snow-flecked windows in winter, plant a garden in spring, and enjoy the outdoors in summer. And is it only the tree’s inhabitants that have added family members? (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A sweet, informative journey. (additional facts, glossary, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0236-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
