An engagingly illustrated work that brings a compelling concept to life.
Urban environmentalist and educator Sando makes green architecture accessible to an elementary school audience in this picture-book debut.
The rooftops of New York City come in several colors: blue, black, silver, stone, and green. Sando briefly describes the reasons behind the other structures’ hues before delving into the subject of green roofs and how planting atop buildings can have a tremendous environmental and emotional impact. In well-labeled diagrams and instructional illustrations, the author, along with illustrator Lehar, reveals the layered structure that makes planting atop a roof naturally beneficial. Sando also makes sure to mention the positive impact it can have on people, who “work and feel better when they look at nature.” Sando seamlessly introduces scientific terms (such as compression, tension, habitat), providing definitions inline or in a callout where necessary as well as in a glossary. Lehar’s bright cartoon illustrations depict real New York landmarks with green roofs to show the variety of appearances they can have as well as a variety of New Yorkers. The text’s complexity is best suited for independent readers at the second- or third-grade level, but teachers will also find plenty of plain-language classroom material here.
An engagingly illustrated work that brings a compelling concept to life.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73416-720-7
Page Count: 27
Publisher: Nausicaa Valley Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fresh, factual blast with hints of drollery.
A survey of the many ways we and other animals use and detect odors.
In this large-format French import, lightweight flaps hide inside views, diagrams, and close-ups added to De Gastold’s whimsical scenes of expressively posed animals and (racially diverse) people sniffing air or water to track down prey or other food, identify mates or offspring, detect danger, and offer clues to migratory routes. The flap on which two seals swim beneath a thick layer of sea ice that separates them from a sniffing polar bear lifts to reveal a seal coming up for breath—right into the jaws of the bear; a pigeon-shaped flap lifts to reveal an aerial view of that pigeon sniffing its way home. Figueras explains in simple but specific language how the “high tech instruments” of creatures including dogs, sharks, elephants (“superheroes of smell”), and ants process pheromones and other odorant molecules. Readers also learn, memorably, how male giraffes smell and taste the urine of females to check out their hormone levels and male ring-tailed lemurs produce a “stomach-churning perfume” to engage in “smell battles” with rivals. These whiffs of humor lighten the informational load…though serious-minded young biologists will still prefer Mary Holland’s Animal Noses (2019), with its more naturalistic photographs. Suggested titles for further reading are limited to three British books and two in French.
A fresh, factual blast with hints of drollery. (index) (Informational novelty. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-912920-07-5
Page Count: 38
Publisher: What on Earth Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Effectively makes the case that we are all biological boardinghouses.
A quick introduction to some of the teeming tenants who call the human body “Home, Sweet Home.”
Squeamish readers may want to go slow: “My name is Demodex and I live on your face!” proclaims one eight-legged micro-critter at the beginning. Led by a preteen lad who poses for internal views, human figures with generically beige skin share space in cartoon illustrations with hordes of mottled, anthropomorphic blobs in diverse bright hues that wave, smile, and scurry busily over magnified interior fleshscapes. Brosnan, rightly pointing out that microbes live “EVERYWHERE” and that there are more of them in our bodies than actual human cells, nods to archaea, fungi, and other types of microscopic life but sticks largely to bacteria as she conducts a tour of the digestive system’s residents. Focusing more on functions than polysyllabic names (though there are plenty of the latter), she mentions pathogens and disease but keeps the tone positive by highlighting the roles common beneficial species play in nutrition, health, and maintaining a balanced intestinal ecosystem. She makes a puzzling claim that viruses cannot “evolve” and offers a woefully incomplete view of manure’s agricultural benefits, in addition to introducing as uncomplicated fact the benefits of probiotics and fecal matter transplants and failing to explore why farmers feel it’s important to feed their animals antibiotics. Still, as a unicellular fellow traveler puts it toward the end, there’s “plenty to chew on” here. This U.K. import’s British spellings and metric measurements remain unaltered.
Effectively makes the case that we are all biological boardinghouses. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-908714-72-5
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Cicada Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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