A solid introduction to African elephants, with engaging photographs.
Numerous full-color photographs ostensibly follow the life of one African elephant from her first day on Earth to her 15th birthday—with plenty of basic elephant facts in between.
“On a hot day in the African savannah, a baby elephant is born.” The initial sentence suitably trumpets its announcement with a bold, white “O” and the rest of the lettering in large black type. The text continues by interspersing the movements of this particular elephant—a female—with such facts as the weight of a typical newborn (“about 200 pounds”), the amount of time elapsing before baby’s first step (generally “a couple hours” after birth), and the ways in which elephants greet their babies and then protect them. Herd composition, social order, eating, drinking, and other habits, as well as, of course, facts about elephants’ trunks, are all covered in accessible language. There are at least six impressively large numbers incorporated into these facts, and none give a comparison to help young readers understand why those numbers are impressive. A child can readily compare their weight to a 200-pound baby elephant, but, for example, how do 50,000 muscles in a trunk compare with a human nose plus a hand? And what does 300 pounds of food look like? The stock photographs are beautiful and exciting—and often heartwarming—and the layout, in white-framed boxes with text against pastel backgrounds, is appealing.
A solid introduction to African elephants, with engaging photographs. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3212-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 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
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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