Still, this combination of science and storytelling models good nature journaling and would be a helpful addition to a home...
After a huge tree falls in the forest behind her home, fifth-grader Ellie explores the area with her classmate Ricky, mapping and sketching and learning about what lives, dies and changes there.
Chapters describing seven trips into the forest (one at night) constitute the narrative here, couched as fiction but clearly primarily intended to convey information. Each opens with a spread illustrating the part of the woods they visit and closes with two pages from Ellie’s field notebook. The children are lucky: Ellie’s father is the forest manager, and her mother is a naturalist; they can identify and explain, but the two also consult appropriate references and explore on their own. Ellie’s drawings are distinctly childlike in style, less accurate and detailed than Herring’s colored pen-and-ink sketches that grace the margins of the story. In both, the plants, animals, insects and lichens are carefully identified. One chapter deals with moss and the tiny creatures that inhabit that Lilliputian world. Another looks at the ways trees rot. The author is clearly very knowledgeable about this ecosystem, but readers beyond the Pacific Northwest may find it hard to visualize. Several times, for example, she mentions salal, a bush that grows only in West Coast states.
Still, this combination of science and storytelling models good nature journaling and would be a helpful addition to a home or classroom in the region where such work is being encouraged. (suggested reading) (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-87071-696-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Oregon State University Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
A wild romp that champions making space for vulnerable creatures and each other.
A boy with ADHD explores nature and himself.
Eleven-year-old Jake Rizzi just wants to be seen as “normal”; he blames his brain for leading him into trouble and making him do things that annoy his peers and even his own parents. Case in point: He’s stuck spending a week in rural Oregon with an aunt he barely knows while his parents go on vacation. Jake’s reluctance changes as he learns about the town’s annual festival, during which locals search for a fabled turtle. But news of this possibly undiscovered species has spread. Although Aunt Hettle insists to Jake that it’s only folklore, the fame-hungry convene, sure that the Ruby-Backed Turtle is indeed real—just as Jake discovers is the case. Keeping its existence secret is critical to protecting the rare creature from a poacher and others with ill intentions. Readers will keep turning pages to find out how Jake and new friend Mia will foil the caricatured villains. Along the way, Bramucci packs in teachable moments around digital literacy, mindfulness, and ecological interdependence, along with the message that “the only way to protect the natural world is to love it.” Jake’s inner monologue elucidates the challenges and benefits of ADHD as well as practical coping strategies. Whether or not readers share Jake’s diagnosis, they’ll empathize with his insecurities. Jake and his family present white; Mia is Black, and names of secondary characters indicate some ethnic diversity.
A wild romp that champions making space for vulnerable creatures and each other. (Adventure. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781547607020
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A contemplation on the magic of friendship told with sweetness, simplicity, and science.
A science-loving 11-year-old moves to a new neighborhood and entertains herself by making robots out of found objects while wishing for real friends.
Penny Rose Mooney, daughter of an entomologist and a banker, eventually finds a soul mate in neighbor Lark Hinkle, a bird-watcher and birdhouse maker. Penny struggles with social interactions in ways that are suggestive of high-functioning autism-spectrum challenges and keeps several notebooks, including her most secret one—Conversation Starters. The girls team up to make roboTown, a metropolis of lights and discarded items cleverly reused. Their newfound friendship is tested when Penny, a statewide science-competition winner, is asked to join the Secret Science Society, leading her to break a promise made in their joint proclamation agreement. The two main girl characters are white; race and ethnicity are less clear for the other characters. A key boy character is immature, poorly behaved, and ultimately ridiculed. Otherwise, however, picture-book author Crimi infuses this unassuming transitional novel with compassion, humor, and a refreshing storyline in which girls organically weave a love for science into their everyday lives. Illustrations by Luyken add to the guileless sensibility.
A contemplation on the magic of friendship told with sweetness, simplicity, and science. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9493-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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