A notable choice for both STEM curricula and family sharing.
This introduction to Darwin focuses on his five-year exploratory journey on the HMS Beagle.
Young Charles loves searching for insects, birds, rocks, and bones, and he also loves sorting his treasures. After finishing school at Cambridge, he’s recommended by his botany professor as naturalist for the Beagle’s mapmaking mission around South America. Collecting specimens and recording “big observations about the tiniest of creatures” in his journal, Charles often remains behind to explore while the Beagle sails the coastline. The forthright narrative highlights Charles’ coming-of-age as a young man and scientist. In Tierra del Fuego, he observes the food chain: “The bigger animals couldn’t survive without eating the smaller ones. Charles saw how their lives were all connected.” Exploring the Andes, Charles’ speculations about the effects of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis are proven when he finds seashells embedded in high-elevation rocks. Thermes’ pencil-and-watercolor maps and illustrations are charming, accessible, and idealized. Charles resembles a boy throughout, save for his long sideburns. Some spreads group many species together in tableaux designed for browsing rather than scientific exactitude. The famous Galápagos Islands stopover gets special attention, and a cross section of the departing Beagle shows tortoises—for eating—in the hold. Endpapers map the global journey and include a timeline, some of which is hidden behind the front flap.
A notable choice for both STEM curricula and family sharing. (notes, sources, further reading, “fun facts”) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2120-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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