Yes, a barrel of monkeys!
The team who produced Freaky, Funky Fish (2021) returns for a primer on primates.
Rhyming couplets provide rudimentary information on chimpanzees, gorillas, howler monkeys, and more. The minimal text—in a bold sans-serif font and with excellent scansion—will pull in reluctant readers and also make for a good read-aloud for the very young. The colorful artwork uses a winning combination of accurate details, sly humor, and expressive, comical facial expressions. On nearly every page, measurements, labels, and brief facts supplement the primary text. A page with the text, “One’s butt is splashed with colored streaks” will have viewers taking in the carefully diagrammed and labeled mandrill anatomy. The recto of this spread is simpler (“Some primates store food in their cheeks”), with one example each of a guenon, patas, mangabey, and macaque—each labeled accordingly—stuffing their faces with fruit. Each page includes a tongue-in-cheek “peculiarity” rating from one to 10. Unsurprisingly, the mandrill— with its side note of “male has a colorful butt to attract females”—scores a 10. Well-researched backmatter offers scientific observations and speculation about unusual appearances and behaviors, plus a few more facts about the highlighted families and about primates in general. The sole spread featuring humans depicts people with varied skin and hair types. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Yes, a barrel of monkeys! (resources for further learning, selected sources) (Informational picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7624-7820-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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 Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
