Narrowly focused until the end and then suddenly too wide.
A new generation of lodgepole pines rises in a burned-over forest.
“Peering down / on the beings below,” Boxer writes anthropomorphically, a pine cone hangs for 40 years out of harm’s way, until a wildfire’s heat melts the resin that glues it together, and seeds are released to shower down to the ash-covered ground. “It wasn’t an end,” she concludes. “From the fire, / life / unfolds. / Green / and new / and ready / to begin.” As she explains in a reflective afterword, lodgepole pines are just one of several fire-dependent types of flora and fauna, reminding readers that we find our strength through adversity; like that pine cone, “we might find we were made for this very moment.” In the illustrations, small woodland creatures nest in branches or browse beneath them until a red tide of flames sweeps in. A season or so later, the ground is green again, and in a final scene, the smiling animals are back, going about their business amid piney seedlings. As a very basic introduction to serotinous trees (that is, those that can delay reproducing until certain specified conditions are met), this will do. But she uses the term serotinous without fully defining it; to judge from that rather oblique closing note, the author seems to have something more metaphorical in mind anyway. Even older audiences may be left wondering just what “moment” she means, though.
Narrowly focused until the end and then suddenly too wide. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781534112964
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
An ideal lead-in to more specific guides to aquarium setup and fish care.
A first introduction to our planet’s finny residents, particularly the decidedly uncommon goldfish.
Preceded by an entire piscatorial ABC that extends over six pages, two children of color lecture an audience of house pets (and readers) about such typical fishy features as scales and gills—properly noting that some fish, like certain eels, have no scales and some, like hagfish, no bony spines. The two then zero in on goldfish, explaining that they are easier to keep at home than tropical fish, originated long ago in China, can recognize the faces of people who bring them food, and with proper care live 25 years. All of this information is presented in a mix of dialogue balloons and single lines of commentary in block letters, accompanying cleanly drawn cartoon illustrations that alternate between a domestic setting and labeled portraits of various fish rendered in fine, exact detail. With easily digestible doses of biological and historical background, common-sense cautionary notes, and a buoyant tone, this is an appealing dive for newly independent readers out to enhance the household menagerie.
An ideal lead-in to more specific guides to aquarium setup and fish care. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943145-15-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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