Make room on the picnic blanket for this convivial gathering.
There are many ants in this book, of nearly as many sizes and shapes.
A grassy meadow seems to be the perfect spot for a light-skinned young picnicker to unpack—but no sooner does the child proclaim it ant-free than a tiny voice calls out from an acorn, “Wrong! There’s one!” No, “TWO!” as the acorn ant is joined by a strawberry-sized South American dinosaur ant. Eventually we meet eight more cousins from, mostly, the Americas: “Big ants. Small ants. Ants with amazing butts.” They all have “HUMONGOUS FAMILIES,” too, as a teeming spread reveals. Aside from giving them small googly eyes, Pirolli depicts each type with salient distinguishing features, and Mosco closes with geographical ranges and other basic facts about all 10. “This book has the wrong title,” the child observes (no kidding) but nonetheless winds up gleefully inviting the entire parade of pismires to join the picnic. Though barely touching the tip of the anthill information-wise, this whimsical work will draw attention to some of the most diverse and successful creatures on the planet and perhaps leave younger readers more inclined to study these ubiquitous insects than step on them.
Make room on the picnic blanket for this convivial gathering. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781774881163
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap.
Budding naturalists who dug We Dig Worms! (2015) will, well, coo over this similarly enlightening accolade.
A curmudgeonly park visitor’s “They’re RATS with wings!” sparks spirited rejoinders from a racially diverse flock of children wearing full-body bird outfits, who swoop down to deliver a mess of pigeon facts. Along with being related to the dodo, “rock doves” fly faster than a car, mate for life, have been crossbred into all sorts of “fancies,” inspired Pablo Picasso to name his daughter “Paloma” in their honor, can be eaten (“Tastes like chicken”), and, like penguins and flamingos, create “pigeon milk” in their crops for their hatchlings. Painted on light blue art paper—“the kind,” writes McCloskey in his afterword, “used by Picasso”—expertly depicted pigeons of diverse breeds common and fancy strut their stuff, with views of the children and other wild creatures, plus occasional helpful labels, interspersed. In the chastened parkgoer’s eyes, as in those of the newly independent readers to whom this is aimed, the often maligned birds are “wonderful.” Cue a fresh set of costumed children on the final page, gearing up to set him straight on squirrels.
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap. (Graphic informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-935179-93-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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