Distinctive, luminous illustrations delight the eye, although visually the story lacks complete cohesion.
Paired with cut-paper diorama illustrations, folk sayings that predict weather become a story in this picture book.
Author/illustrator MacKay begins with the saying “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” and the accompanying illustration shows a family—an older man and two young children—peering out the window of their cozy house into a red sunset. MacKay creates her illustrations by using cutout paper drawings placed in dioramas, lit, and then photographed. This technique achieves remarkable luminosity and a three-dimensional aspect, with the overall impression being that of looking into a magical stage set. The drawback, though, is that while MacKay does link story elements within the illustrations (the children appear throughout), the individual pictures still don’t agreeably mesh because the light in each one is different, giving a subtle, disparate impression. The organization of weather-related folk sayings into a story of a family sailing, fishing, camping, and then heading home as a storm threatens is original and works well. Too, it may nudge readers to become more curious about their natural world (backmatter gives explanations behind the sayings). And the illustrations—individually—are mesmerizing. Both children and caregiver have beige skin and tightly curled hair, suggesting mixed heritage.
Distinctive, luminous illustrations delight the eye, although visually the story lacks complete cohesion. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-91783-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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
Wow.
The stories of the births of the universe, the planet Earth, and a human child are told in this picture book.
Bauer begins with cosmic nothing: “In the dark / in the deep, deep dark / a speck floated / invisible as thought / weighty as God.” Her powerful words build the story of the creation of the universe, presenting the science in poetic free verse. First, the narrative tells of the creation of stars by the Big Bang, then the explosions of some of those stars, from which dust becomes the matter that coalesces into planets, then the creation of life on Earth: a “lucky planet…neither too far / nor too near…its yellow star…the Sun.” Holmes’ digitally assembled hand-marbled paper-collage illustrations perfectly pair with the text—in fact the words and illustrations become an inseparable whole, as together they both delineate and suggest—the former telling the story and the latter, with their swirling colors suggestive of vast cosmos, contributing the atmosphere. It’s a stunning achievement to present to readers the factual events that created the birth of the universe, the planet Earth, and life on Earth with such an expressive, powerful creativity of words paired with illustrations so evocative of the awe and magic of the cosmos. But then the story goes one brilliant step further and gives the birth of a child the same beginning, the same sense of magic, the same miracle.
Wow. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7883-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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