An engagingly informal appeal.
Join the only warm-blooded animal with scales on a quest for ants and termites over African grasslands.
Not to be confused with giant anteaters, armadillos, or anything else (“some people even say I look like an artichoke with a face”), the eight species of pangolins are actually related to bears and cats, walk on their hind legs (“like a T. rex!”), and can roll up into an armored ball to repel predators. Unfortunately, such defenses don’t help against human predators, who misguidedly harvest pangolin scales for supposed medical purposes. According to a closing note, humans poach up to 200,000 pangolins a year, giving them the status of “most illegally trafficked mammal on Earth.” Still, glimpses of people working to preserve pangolin populations (perhaps including the offstage child whose brown-skinned hand is inserted into one of the finely detailed illustrations) add an encouraging note; the closing fact file offers leads to animal-friendly organizations to support. Scenes of a lion fruitlessly trying to munch on a rolled-up pangolin and later views of an irrepressibly cute pangolin baby add plenty of visual pizzazz to this plea to readers’ conscience. “Okay, well, there’s oodles more ants to eat, so we’d better get going,” says the pangolin parent, strolling off into the sunset. “But I hope to see you again soon!” Human characters are diverse.
An engagingly informal appeal. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593618158
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap.
Budding naturalists who dug We Dig Worms! (2015) will, well, coo over this similarly enlightening accolade.
A curmudgeonly park visitor’s “They’re RATS with wings!” sparks spirited rejoinders from a racially diverse flock of children wearing full-body bird outfits, who swoop down to deliver a mess of pigeon facts. Along with being related to the dodo, “rock doves” fly faster than a car, mate for life, have been crossbred into all sorts of “fancies,” inspired Pablo Picasso to name his daughter “Paloma” in their honor, can be eaten (“Tastes like chicken”), and, like penguins and flamingos, create “pigeon milk” in their crops for their hatchlings. Painted on light blue art paper—“the kind,” writes McCloskey in his afterword, “used by Picasso”—expertly depicted pigeons of diverse breeds common and fancy strut their stuff, with views of the children and other wild creatures, plus occasional helpful labels, interspersed. In the chastened parkgoer’s eyes, as in those of the newly independent readers to whom this is aimed, the often maligned birds are “wonderful.” Cue a fresh set of costumed children on the final page, gearing up to set him straight on squirrels.
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap. (Graphic informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-935179-93-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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