Handsome bookmaking, integral cultural information, and dynamic illustrations interact perfectly.
This volume, counting to 12 in both English and Kunwinjku, presents illustrated information about animals found in West Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Each entry includes the digit, the written numeral in a descriptive phrase, and a general species name in both languages. The text color for the digit and written numerals is ochre—helpful, since Kunwinjku numerals can be multiple words. Several paragraphs precisely describe the animal’s natural habitat, characteristics, and significance to the Aboriginal peoples of West Arnhem Land. Often, these animals are valued as food, and both traditional and modern methods of hunting and cooking them are mentioned. On the page counting “Eight water pythons / slithering in the mud / Kunbidkudji dja danjbik / borlokko karribirri wake / kukih,” Maralngurra and Wright explain, “We hunt for borlokko by searching for them in the water with our hands. They have small, sharp teeth, but they aren’t venomous.” When appropriate, he makes cultural distinctions in how different regional groups relate to the species. “Duwa people…cannot eat borlokko because of their religious beliefs, but Yirridjdja people (another group) can.” Animals include spoonbills, echidnas, turtles, and knob-tailed geckos. The exquisite illustrations derive inspiration in technique, colors, and visual iconography from ancient rock paintings preserved within the region. Intricate ink hatching, or rarrk, “x-ray style” (the depiction of the animals’ insides), and a traditional palette of ochre, browns, white, and black richly distinguish this work. Maralngurra is a member of the Ngaingbali clan; Wright is of settler heritage.
Handsome bookmaking, integral cultural information, and dynamic illustrations interact perfectly. (further information, artist bio, pronunciation notes) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-59270-356-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Science at its best: informative and gross.
Why not? Because “IT’S FULL OF GERMS.”
Of course, Ben-Barak rightly notes, so is everything else—from your socks to the top of Mount Everest. Just to demonstrate, he invites readers to undertake an exploratory adventure (only partly imaginary): First touch a certain seemingly blank spot on the page to pick up a microbe named Min, then in turn touch teeth, shirt, and navel to pick up Rae, Dennis, and Jake. In the process, readers watch crews of other microbes digging cavities (“Hey kid, brush your teeth less”), spreading “lovely filth,” and chowing down on huge rafts of dead skin. For the illustrations, Frost places dialogue balloons and small googly-eyed cartoon blobs of diverse shape and color onto Rundgren’s photographs, taken using a scanning electron microscope, of the fantastically rugged surfaces of seemingly smooth paper, a tooth, textile fibers, and the jumbled crevasses in a belly button. The tour concludes with more formal introductions and profiles for Min and the others: E. coli, Streptococcus, Aspergillus niger, and Corynebacteria. “Where will you take Min tomorrow?” the author asks teasingly. Maybe the nearest bar of soap.
Science at its best: informative and gross. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17536-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few...
Shamir offers an investigation of the foundations of freedoms in the United States via its founding documents, as well as movements and individuals who had great impacts on shaping and reshaping those institutions.
The opening pages of this picture book get off to a wobbly start with comments such as “You know that feeling you get…when you see a wide open field that you can run through without worrying about traffic or cars? That’s freedom.” But as the book progresses, Shamir slowly steadies the craft toward that wide-open field of freedom. She notes the many obvious-to-us-now exclusivities that the founding political documents embodied—that the entitled, white, male authors did not extend freedom to enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans, and women—and encourages readers to learn to exercise vigilance and foresight. The gradual inclusion of these left-behind people paints a modestly rosy picture of their circumstances today, and the text seems to give up on explaining how Native Americans continue to be left behind. Still, a vital part of what makes freedom daunting is its constant motion, and that is ably expressed. Numerous boxed tidbits give substance to the bigger political picture. Who were the abolitionists and the suffragists, what were the Montgomery bus boycott and the “Uprising of 20,000”? Faulkner’s artwork conveys settings and emotions quite well, and his drawing of Ruby Bridges is about as darling as it gets. A helpful timeline and bibliography appear as endnotes.
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few misfires. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54728-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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