An enticing look at our national parks—rhapsodic but with attention to their checkered history.
A tribute to Glacier Bay, Yellowstone, the Everglades, and other national parks.
Personifying her subjects (“You may think you know me”), Hinrichs introduces, in rhyme, 16 parks, from Hawaii’s Haleakalā to Acadia in Maine, then goes on in a prose afterword to recap the genesis and growth of the National Park Service. In that long note, she describes how Native residents were driven from Yosemite (so named by White colonizers with an Ahwahneechee word that means “they are killers”) and how settlers of German, English, and Scottish descent were denigrated and then forcibly relocated from the land that became Shenandoah National Park. (The author also notes elsewhere that the latter was racially segregated until 1950.) Though her overall tone is celebratory, she closes by reassuring readers that mixed feelings are natural and leadingly asks them to think of ways to “connect with each other to share and honor our differences.” Mineker depicts a range of grand landscapes and natural wonders in her digital illustrations; she puts a cast of human figures—diverse in terms of race and ability—prominently in the foregrounds to underscore the point that national parks exist to be experienced as well as preserved. A page of thoughtful comments from actual young park visitors at the end reinforces the theme.
An enticing look at our national parks—rhapsodic but with attention to their checkered history. (map, selected sources) (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781623542603
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe.
An introduction to gravity.
The book opens with the most iconic demonstration of gravity, an apple falling. Throughout, Herz tackles both huge concepts—how gravity compresses atoms to form stars and how black holes pull all kinds of matter toward them—and more concrete ones: how gravity allows you to jump up and then come back down to the ground. Gravity narrates in spare yet lyrical verse, explaining how it creates planets and compresses atoms and comparing itself to a hug. “My embrace is tight enough that you don’t float like a balloon, but loose enough that you can run and leap and play.” Gravity personifies itself at times: “I am stubborn—the bigger things are, the harder I pull.” Beautiful illustrations depict swirling planets and black holes alongside racially diverse children playing, running, and jumping, all thanks to gravity. Thorough backmatter discusses how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity and explains Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. While at times Herz’s explanations may be a bit too technical for some readers, burgeoning scientists will be drawn in.
An in-depth and visually pleasing look at one of the most fundamental forces in the universe. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668936849
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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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