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
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.
A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.
Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5625-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
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