An attractively simple explanation of a pressing problem.
Earth and its human inhabitants have the power to remove the excess carbon in the air that leads to climate change.
This premise underlies a hopeful explanation of the climate crisis and possible mitigation tools. Even before the title page, capable readers will find brief definitions of terms such as carbon, carbon dioxide, photosynthesis, fossil fuels, and the greenhouse effect. The pages that follow are designed for younger readers and listeners. Boersma’s digitally colored drawings are attractive and detailed, showcasing city scenes, an underwater kelp forest, a mangrove swamp, a temperate woodland, and more, with a diverse human population. Levy’s poetic text describes the carbon problem and ways to address it. Sea kelp, mangroves, and dirt all trap carbon in different ways. People can help, too, by switching to more environmentally friendly power sources, farming methods, and transportation. This versatile writer’s published titles include picture books, fiction, and biographies for young people. Most have been historically themed; science is a new direction for her. While scientists may find some of Levy’s explanations oversimplified, she takes a positive approach to explaining the causes and challenges of climate change—something encouraged by climate educators. There’s no question that this is a valuable introduction and, with its pleasing repetitions, a satisfying read-aloud.
An attractively simple explanation of a pressing problem. (author’s note, selected sources, information on how people are helping the planet) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781547612062
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
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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