A delightful look at a unique aquatic environment that will nourish children’s natural sense of wonder.
What can you find in a tide pool?
The author of the Sibert Medal–winning picture book Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera (2020) introduces young readers to the delights and wonders of a Pacific coastal tide pool. Intriguingly, the story begins before the frontmatter—introductory text and illustrations portraying a tidal cycle lead to, and then seamlessly incorporate, the book’s title page. Fleming names some of the creatures who wait in the tide pool for the ocean waves to return: “clusters of barnacles,” “beds of mussels,” “patches of sponge,” and sundry other invertebrates as well as fish. Descriptive verbs abound: a kelp crab “idles”; a rock crab “scoots.” At high tide, “everything is busy. / All brim with life,” until the water recedes and quiet returns. Hevron’s harmonious acrylic paint–and-pencil illustrations perfectly pair with Fleming’s gentle, lyrical text. The marine creatures are clearly depicted, stylized but recognizable. The octopus and sea cucumber hiding under rocks at low tide are out and about in the water during high tide. The backmatter includes an illustrated guide to the species shown throughout the artwork—offering the opportunity for a seek-and-find—and an annotated diagram showing their habitats. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A delightful look at a unique aquatic environment that will nourish children’s natural sense of wonder. (resources) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4915-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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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