A lighthearted invitation to join the insect-appreciation club: “Righteous exoskeleton, dude!” (index, glossary)...
The straight, more or less, “poop” on dung beetles, dragonflies (“fighter jets of the insect world”), and the rest of our six-legged overlords.
Aside from making debatable claims that insects are “the dominant life-form on Earth today” and “the true rulers of our planet,” Collard delivers airy but persuasive evidence that beetles are “da bomb!”—and likewise all their teeming relatives. After noting that insect species alone outnumber comic-book superheroes (for instance) by approximately 1,000 to one, he offers a history of this ancient clan, overviews of insect body parts, diet, reproductive practices, mimicry, and other general features, as well as ups and downs in our complex relationship with them. Examples, nearly all alive and in natural settings, pose in photogenic splendor in the sheaves of bright color close-ups, all but a handful by the author himself. And if Collard declines to supply leads to further information (“You are all smart. You know how to go to the library”), he does close with notes on scientific nomenclature plus a list of rain-forest conservation groups.
A lighthearted invitation to join the insect-appreciation club: “Righteous exoskeleton, dude!” (index, glossary) (Nonfiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58089-642-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme.
An age-old rivalry is reluctantly put aside when two young vacationers are lost in the wilderness.
Anthropomorphic—in body if definitely not behavior—Dogg Scout Oscar and pampered Molly Hissleton stray from their separate camps, meet by chance in a trackless magic forest, and almost immediately recognize that their only chance of survival, distasteful as the notion may be, lies in calling a truce. Patterson and Grabenstein really work the notion here that cooperation is better than prejudice founded on ignorance and habit, interspersing explicit exchanges on the topic while casting the squabbling pair with complementary abilities that come out as they face challenges ranging from finding food to escaping such predators as a mountain lion and a pack of vicious “weaselboars.” By the time they cross a wide river (on a raft steered by “Old Jim,” an otter whose homespun utterances are generally cribbed from Mark Twain—an uneasy reference) back to civilization, the two are BFFs. But can that friendship survive the return, with all the social and familial pressures to resume the old enmity? A climactic cage-match–style confrontation before a worked-up multispecies audience provides the answer. In the illustrations (not seen in finished form) López plops wide-eyed animal heads atop clothed, more or less human forms and adds dialogue balloons for punchlines.
A waggish tale with a serious (and timely) theme. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-41156-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
A-mew-sing fare for readers who sometimes feel like fraidycats themselves.
Two shelter cats take on a mysterious puss with weird powers who is terrorizing the feline community.
Hardly have timorous (and aptly named) Poop and her sophisticated buddy, Pasha, been brought home by their new “human beans” for a two-week trial than they are accosted by fiery-eyed Scaredy Cat, utterly trashing the kitchen with a click of his claws and, hissing that he’s in charge of the neighborhood, threatening that if they don’t act like proper cats—disdaining ordinary cat food and any summons (they are not dogs, after all), clawing the furniture instead of the scratching post, and showing like “cattitude”—it’ll be back to the shelter for them. Will Poop and Pasha prove to be fraidycats or flee to the cowed clowder of homeless cats hiding from the bully in the nearby woods? Nope, they are made of sterner stuff and resolutely set out to enlist feline allies in a “quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of purrs!” Cast into a gazillion very short chapters related by furry narrators Poop and Pasha, who are helpfully depicted in portrait vignettes by Herzog at each chapter’s head, the ensuing adventures test the defiant kitties’ courage (and, in some cases, attention spans) on the way to a spooky but poignant climax set, appropriately enough as it happens, in a pet graveyard.
A-mew-sing fare for readers who sometimes feel like fraidycats themselves. (Adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-49443-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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