A useful title on a kid-friendly topic.
Guess each animal from facts about their teeth combined with hints about their behavior, location, or anatomy.
A large white speech bubble appears on each recto page, mostly obscuring a photo of an animal. A statement about that animal’s teeth (or lack thereof, in the cases of anteaters and humpback whales) is followed by a hint about the animal’s traits to facilitate guessing. For example, “You can tell how old I am by the growth rings on my teeth. I am… / Hint: I live in water and am smart and social.” Bits of animals visible around the speech bubble also offer some clues. Some kids may have the answer; many young children will not. The page turn reveals a full-page photo, the animal’s name (dolphin, in this case) in large type, and a callout box with facts about its dental characteristics: “Bottlenose dolphins only get one set of teeth for their entire lives. They use their teeth to catch their food, and then they swallow it whole.” The book matter-of-factly introduces information about 11 land and sea animals as well as a human representative, a young child with Asian features. Backmatter defines herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores along with a short guessing game about these categories and presents a diagram of the human mouth with descriptions of its teeth. The full-color stock photos vary in quality. (Due to Covid complications, this book will publish in paperback on pub date and in hardcover in Jan. 2021.)
A useful title on a kid-friendly topic. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64351-818-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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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