A whimsically illustrated and informative guide that will turn readers into bee experts.
Chubak’s meticulously organized guide covers everything readers could want to know about the intricate world of honeybees.
The author briskly but thoroughly walks readers through the world of honeybees, beginning with their life stages, kingdom classification, and the functions of various hormone glands. All vocabulary words—such as entomologists and haploid—are in bold, and each section is short in length and includes bite-sized information nuggets: “When multiple queen sisters are raised in a hive, they can fight for sole dominance of the colony. This royal battle is announced by the queens with an audible sound called piping, tooting, or bugling. It may sound like a chirp from the outside of the hive. After the battle, only one queen will remain in the hive and be accepted by the colony.” The book is broken down into six broad categories: “The Honey Bee Colony,” “The World of the Queen Bee,” “The Amazing Worker Bee: Activity in the Brood Nest Nursery,” “Worker Bees’ Jobs Inside the Hive but Outside of the Brood Nest,” “Field Bees,” and “Drone: The Mating Specialist.” Each section then focuses on the individual bees that inhabit that category. Evans’ plentiful illustrations feature colorful foregrounds with black-and-white backgrounds for tongue-in-cheek interpretations of the different bee types, including a worker bee clocking in to a factory and a drone bee holding a college pennant in front of a frat house. The book’s last section, “Activities & Famous Bees,” puzzlingly does not include any activities, and readers may find themselves wishing for a condensed index of vocabulary words. The prose is rather clipped, which often makes understanding the book’s truly fascinating information easier. (Drone bees only have one set of chromosomes! Bees use plant resin for medicinal purposes!) The sheer amount of information the book includes is staggering, while Chubak’s straightforward tone will likely appeal to kids and adults alike.
A whimsically illustrated and informative guide that will turn readers into bee experts.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781038300379
Page Count: 120
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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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