Not exactly evenhanded in ascribing genetic agency but joyous, clever, and inclusive.
Actor and podcaster Rivas offers effervescent affirmation that when it comes to being alive, we are all huge winners.
It all begins with “the biggest race of your life,” depicted in Boroff’s animated, glowing illustrations as a cloud of sperm rendered as thumbprints or thumbprint-shaped blobs with long, wriggly tails zooming toward an egg cell. Being “crafty…quick…smart and a little wild,” one particular “you” got there first, and with a bit of placental protection, “all the forces of the universe cooperated so that you could be here.” Rivas covers the bases, evolution-wise, with separate, allusive references to a heritage measured in “billions of years” and to something “mysterious, immense, and profound” that “had already decided, since the beginning of time, that you would exist.” More importantly, you were wanted, the author affirms. And, being “a champion of champions. Genetically speaking,” you “WERE BORN A WINNER.” The egg’s role doesn’t get much explicit notice in the narrative, but it does in the artwork, which includes schematic but recognizable views of an ovum, a placenta, and several figures with bulging midriffs. Also, on another page, silhouetted couples, including one who uses a wheelchair, dance at a “starting line” (and “there are many starting lines,” Rivas writes).
Not exactly evenhanded in ascribing genetic agency but joyous, clever, and inclusive. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9798986827346
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Wheat Penny Press
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
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
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