Fun and fundamental food facts.
The sources and nutritional value of 17 commonly eaten foods are revealed along with additional nutritional information.
The author/illustrator uses her “somewhat overwhelming collection of terrific tiny toys” to great advantage, starting with the cover. Layout and design include pleasing, alternating blocks of color on each page, with bold headings naming the foods. A handful of mathematical symbols easily show that white chocolate consists of milk chocolate minus cocoa mass and that the flour ingredient in a pizza crust comes from wheat. There is a long but crystal-clear path leading to the creation of a peanut-butter–and-jelly sandwich, including the source of grape jelly’s pectin and how peanuts are roasted. In fact, the only confusing part of the book is the unnecessary page that instructs “How to read this book.” Simple explanations of such processes as cheese making and honey production include fascinating asides such as: “Honeybees visit 2,000,000 flowers to make one jar of honey.” The overall look is retro, but the content is decidedly contemporary. Care was taken to include diversity in the human dolls and in pointing out six animals, in addition to dairy cows, whose milk is used by human beings. The text is accessible and playful. The 17 highlighted food choices, as well as the brightly colored chart advising readers to eat from “five food groups at every meal,” will be tolerable to vegetarians but not vegans.
Fun and fundamental food facts. (index, charts, glossary) (Informational picture book. 5-10)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-21546-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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