This volume may even lure children (and adults) back to the farm.
Engaging color photos depict smiling farmers and fishermen (and fisherwoman) and gleeful children eating their products.
The colors are intense, and the prolific photographer captures her subjects from all over the U.S. with big smiles, often in midbite. Adults are of different races and genders, but many are white males. The children are very diverse. The people who “grow, raise and catch” are grouped by product: vegetables, berries, citrus, and fruit; wheat, rice, potato, and corn; dairy, beef, chicken, and pig; and fish, shellfish, and lobster. The last pages mention family farms and urban gardens. Starting with black-and-white photos from the early 20th century, the book makes an Oz-like switch to full color. The text mentions the recent locavore trend of farmers markets and farm stands. Each double-page spread is laid out as a grid with several photos and a block or two of text (white letters on a dark-colored background). Simple, declarative sentences describe foods and people. Interesting facts are mentioned: “Corn always has an even number of rows.” Some may wish there could have been a distinction made among different lettuce varieties in the assertion that “even though it’s mostly made up of water, it’s very nutritious.” But that’s a small quibble. This will prove to be an attractive, useful book for food and nutrition units in the lower grades.
This volume may even lure children (and adults) back to the farm. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3643-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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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