An attractively designed, appealing, and informative story suitable for reading aloud or reading independently.
Stunning color photographs and a lively, engaging text depict both the special bond between a mother leopard and her cub and how the cub learns to become independent.
This coming-of-age story about Legadema, meaning “light from the sky” in the Setswana language, takes place in Botswana’s lush Okavango Delta region. The Jouberts chronicle how the cub learns from her mother and from experience the skills she will need to survive on her own. One dramatic moment finds the cub encountering a pride of hungry lions and narrowly escaping by climbing a tree. The descriptive text is vividly evocative of Legadema’s world: “When crimson clouds blanketed the horizon and the forest came alive with a cacophony of animals and an orchestra of frogs that sounded like tiny bells, Legadema’s mother carried her cub in her mouth and settled into their sheltered den.” Beverly Joubert’s captivating photographs capture the cub at play, at rest, interacting with her mother, and hunting. The Jouberts explain in an afterword that they spent four and a half years living with Legadema. In addition to Legadema’s story is general information about leopards and a color map showing where they live in Africa.
An attractively designed, appealing, and informative story suitable for reading aloud or reading independently. (maps, photos) (Nonfiction. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2973-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: National Geographic Kids
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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
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
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