An odd assortment designed for entertainment over education.
While fish are similar in having fins, gills, tails, and usually scales, in other ways they can be surprising.
Shumaker’s debut picture book introduces a variety of unusual fish grouped into 18 different examples of intriguing appearances or behaviors. She introduces her categories page by page, with single lines of rhyming couplets in a large, legible type: “Some fish dance and some play dead. / One fish sports a see-through head!” The groupings seem arbitrary, as is often the case for collections of curiosities, but the facts are certainly interesting and generally accurate. The page designs vary widely. Some spreads are filled with cheerful cartoons full of different fish species. Other pages feature a single fish, sometimes with further details and labels in a smaller font. These fish have googly eyes and expressive faces but are reasonably recognizable in appearance. Many pages include a box with further facts—but not always the same kinds of facts. Beyond the species name, there might be observations, field notes, or a relevant question. Most fish also have a “freakiness” or “funkiness” rating displayed, as if that, too, were a fact like its interesting behavior or location. Three pages of backmatter give more information about fish that zap, sting, sing, and so on. Pair with Corinne Demas and Artemis Roehrig’s Do Jellyfish Like Peanut Butter?, illustrated by Ellen Shi (2020), for more marine fun.
An odd assortment designed for entertainment over education. (further learning, selected sources) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7624-6884-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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 Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be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
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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