High marks for presentation and showy cast alike.
Wild animals show off adaptations that are not apparent at first, or sometimes even second, sight.
If the big, bright, close-up nature photos (mostly stock) and effective use of page turns to rev up the drama don’t rivet younger audiences, Park’s pithy verse should do the trick. Here’s a platypus, for example: “I might look cute / with my BILL and fur. / But hidden from sight… // IS A VENOMOUS SPUR!” Likewise, the wonderfully named sarcastic fringehead fish has a mouth that snaps open like a folded umbrella to enormous size (“When challenged, / I won’t step aside. / I’m ready to FIGHT / when I… // OPEN WIDE!”). Other (less terrifying) revelations include a penguin gaping to expose a tongue covered in sharp, stiff bristles; a snowy owl dangling surprisingly long legs; a squirrel-like colugo extending broad gliding membranes; a pangolin with a long pink tongue protruding from its mouth (kept in the creature’s chest); and a swimming tiger’s webbed toes. The author adds explanatory notes with each entry and, along with a closing invitation to readers to identify their own hidden adaptations, offers several leads to broader surveys of the topic. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
High marks for presentation and showy cast alike. (glossary, photo credits) (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72844-567-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding...
Beginning readers who tunnel through this upbeat first introduction will “dig” them too.
After an opening look at several kinds of worm (including the candy sort), McCloskey drills down to the nitty-gritty on earthworms. He describes how they help soil with their digging and “poop” (“EEW!”) and presents full-body inside and outside views with labeled parts. He also answers in the worms’ collective voice such questions as “Why do you come out after the rain?” and “How big is the biggest worm in the world?” that are posed by a multiethnic cast of intent young investigators in the cartoon illustrations. A persistent but frustrated bluebird’s “Yum, yum!!” and rejected invitations to lunch offer indirect references to worms as food sources, and reproductive details are likewise limited to oblique notes that worms have big families “born from cocoons.” Single scenes mingle with short sequences of panels in pictures that are drawn on brown paper bags for an appropriately earthy look.
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding naturalists. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-935179-80-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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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