Those wishing to share the natural world with kids should begin with Ellen Stoll Walsh and then move on to works by Nancy...
Mr. Tate’s class disappoints their fans with this outing to Rocky Ridge Mountain and a look at the ways people use rocks.
Ranger Pedra meets the students and introduces them to the notion that rocks have stories to tell. The class counts what they “hear” from a boulder: one sculptor, two cement trucks, three beetles, four oceanside mounds of drying salt, five baby turtles in the sand, six stalactites dripping water, seven gems, a sidewalk comprising eight pieces of slate, nine bricks and 10 panes of glass. Ranger Pedra goes on to mention the fact that rocks help date the world, and Mr. Tate asks for other ways rocks are used in everyday life. Snow’s digital collages are well-suited to the subject matter, though the people seem more wooden and obviously digital than in previous entries. Overall, the team of Formento and Snow has not been able to capture the same winning combination of education and story as they did with their first, This Tree Counts! (2010). This latest has the same ambiguous-audience problem that plagued These Seas Count! (2013), the counting pages dumbing material down for the youngest listeners (failing to even introduce geology vocabulary; stalactites are called “cave spears”) while the backmatter presents paragraphs of information for a significantly older audience. An uneven flow may also cause readers to lose interest midway.
Those wishing to share the natural world with kids should begin with Ellen Stoll Walsh and then move on to works by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7870-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers.
Echoing the meter of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Ward uses catchy original rhymes to describe the variety of nests birds create.
Each sweet stanza is complemented by a factual, engaging description of the nesting habits of each bird. Some of the notes are intriguing, such as the fact that the hummingbird uses flexible spider web to construct its cup-shaped nest so the nest will stretch as the chicks grow. An especially endearing nesting behavior is that of the emperor penguin, who, with unbelievable patience, incubates the egg between his tummy and his feet for up to 60 days. The author clearly feels a mission to impart her extensive knowledge of birds and bird behavior to the very young, and she’s found an appealing and attractive way to accomplish this. The simple rhymes on the left page of each spread, written from the young bird’s perspective, will appeal to younger children, and the notes on the right-hand page of each spread provide more complex factual information that will help parents answer further questions and satisfy the curiosity of older children. Jenkins’ accomplished collage illustrations of common bird species—woodpecker, hummingbird, cowbird, emperor penguin, eagle, owl, wren—as well as exotics, such as flamingoes and hornbills, are characteristically naturalistic and accurate in detail.
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers. (author’s note, further resources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2116-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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