Why pine for prehistoric predators when their direct descendants are perching on the nearest birdbath?
Can it be that dinosaurs still actually live in our backyards, fly in the sky, and poop on our cars?
Indeed. Though it’s not exactly news anymore, Sheneman here gives the bird-dino connection fresh jolts of wonder and hilarity. He traces it from the Jurassic Era to today—explaining how an asteroid brought the age of dinosaurs to a sudden end (allowing, the mammalian author rashly claims, mammals to become “the dominant form of life”) but left one branch of feathered theropods to evolve, diversify, and spread to nearly every corner of our planet. The illustrations follow suit, beginning with mildly caricatured, dot- or googly-eyed dinosaurs posing in idyllic settings and making dim-bulb side comments. These give way in stages to views of modern (equally verbal) penguins, pigeons, peacocks, and other avian species in various habitats before gathering with their (even more) prehistoric forbears for a droll but revealing group portrait and then perching around the closing timeline. “I still don’t get the resemblance,” mutters a fuddled-looking T. rex at the end, looking down at a chicken. Viewers, though, well might. A trollish caveman, a lumpy White descendant in a lab coat (identified as “your dad”) joking about the fried dinosaur on his plate, and a dinner companion politely telling him to cut it out are the only human figures in sight. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 68% of actual size.)
Why pine for prehistoric predators when their direct descendants are perching on the nearest birdbath? (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-297234-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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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