Sure to lure children into the woods.
Clues and descriptive language will spur children to become wintertime trackers.
Rhyming text that begins identically on every other spread—“Look! Look! / Tracks in the snow!”—describes the main characteristics of each track for readers and then asks them to guess who made it. “Tracks with three points, / Tracks like a wedge. / Who left the tracks by the snow-topped hedge?” Smudgy black tracks echo what children would see in nature, and a glimpse of a part of each animal gives a further clue. In this case, the vibrant tip of a blue, yellow, and orange tail. The page turn reveals the answer—a long-tailed pheasant—and a short paragraph of information. Though the rhyme stumbles once (claws with fours), the descriptions of tracks are stellar, giving kids similes and adjectives that they can then use for other things; the duck’s tracks are like kites, the red squirrel’s are like fingers and have claws, and the deer’s are heart-shaped and in two lines. Made with shredded and torn handmade paper and colored pencil, the spreads are filled with gorgeous textures, encouraging the eye to pore over not just the tracks, but the animals’ habitats as well. The snow isn’t flat white; it has shadings and color variations. And while the animals look realistically furry or feathered, the foliage is more stylistic: a pine with lace collars of snow, another with delicately feathered branches. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Sure to lure children into the woods. (life-size tracks) (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-912757-94-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boxer Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer.
Rotner follows up her celebrations of spring and autumn with this look at all things winter.
Beginning with the signs that winter is coming—bare trees, shorter days, colder temperatures—Rotner eases readers into the season. People light fires and sing songs on the solstice, trees and plants stop growing, and shadows grow long. Ice starts to form on bodies of water and windows. When the snow flies, the fun begins—bundle up and then build forts, make snowballs and snowmen (with eyebrows!), sled, ski (nordic is pictured), skate, snowshoe, snowboard, drink hot chocolate. Animals adapt to the cold as well. “Birds grow more feathers” (there’s nothing about fluffing and air insulation) and mammals, more hair. They have to search for food, and Rotner discusses how many make or find shelter, slow down, hibernate, or go underground or underwater to stay warm. One page talks about celebrating holidays with lights and decorations. The photos show a lit menorah, an outdoor deciduous tree covered in huge Christmas bulbs, a girl next to a Chinese dragon head, a boy with lit luminarias, and some fireworks. The final spread shows signs of the season’s shift to spring. Rotner’s photos, as always, are a big draw. The children are a marvelous mix of cultures and races, and all show their clear delight with winter.
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3976-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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