Very simple, a little bland, but a good and read-aloud-ready way of introducing an important natural process.
A rhymed climb up a food chain.
Shaffer and Neal follow a series of creatures: plants that create their own food with the help of the “glorious, life-giving, fiery sun,” a cricket that munches on grass, a mouse that eats the cricket, a red milk snake that swallows the mouse, a red hawk that hunts the mouse, a fox that pounces on the hawk, and, finally, a bear that makes a meal out of the fox. More bloodthirsty young readers may be disappointed that both author and illustrator largely leave out the CRUNCH! part of this natural progression—in the illustrations, only the foliage suffers, as none of the featured eaters are shown actually chowing down on animal prey, and the language is likewise abstract. The general concept is clear enough, though, and in both the cumulative rhyme and the nature notes at the end, Shaffer complements Neal’s pettable-looking creature cast with easily digestible descriptions of behaviors and diets. The author properly acknowledges that this particular chain “occurs in a temperate deciduous forest,” and if she never explicitly introduces the more complicated (and accurate) notion of food webs, she does finish off her narrative by noting that “some days” the fox gets away, whereupon the “hungry black bear / munches flowers and seeds… / all that she needs.”
Very simple, a little bland, but a good and read-aloud-ready way of introducing an important natural process. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593565520
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding...
Beginning readers who tunnel through this upbeat first introduction will “dig” them too.
After an opening look at several kinds of worm (including the candy sort), McCloskey drills down to the nitty-gritty on earthworms. He describes how they help soil with their digging and “poop” (“EEW!”) and presents full-body inside and outside views with labeled parts. He also answers in the worms’ collective voice such questions as “Why do you come out after the rain?” and “How big is the biggest worm in the world?” that are posed by a multiethnic cast of intent young investigators in the cartoon illustrations. A persistent but frustrated bluebird’s “Yum, yum!!” and rejected invitations to lunch offer indirect references to worms as food sources, and reproductive details are likewise limited to oblique notes that worms have big families “born from cocoons.” Single scenes mingle with short sequences of panels in pictures that are drawn on brown paper bags for an appropriately earthy look.
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding naturalists. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-935179-80-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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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