Hits the sweet spot between primary introductions and full-length field guides.
A gallery of 40 common U.S. birds, with painted portraits and brief nature notes.
Stretching the confines of a “backyard” to include great blue herons and turkey vultures, Berkowitz selects birds that beginners should find relatively easy to identify, and LaRue helps out by emphasizing distinctive markings and colors in her simplified renderings. For true tyros, the author opens with instructions for making an all-edible feeder out of an apple, seeds, peanut butter, and twine but then goes on to assemble a tool kit (binoculars, camera, bug spray, proper footwear, a pen and notebook) for more ambitious bird-watchers and slips in a blank page to serve as a sighting log. Attempts to reproduce each bird’s call run along the lines of the Carolina wren’s “Teakettle!” and like fancies (or, in the cases of both the European starling and the mockingbird, a side-stepping “I imitate!”), but each entry does include, along with an image of a male individual, usually perched on a twig, a range map and pictures of an egg and of seeds, bugs, garbage, or other typical foods. “Birds are everywhere,” the author encouragingly promises and, except perhaps for the turkey vulture (which “swoop[s] in when an animal has died to eat the remains”), fun to seek out and study.
Hits the sweet spot between primary introductions and full-length field guides. (conservation suggestions, glossary) (Nonfiction. 6-10)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4236-6263-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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