A perennially hot topic explored with a deft mix of specific details and light touches.
A basic guide to how plants and animals make more plants and animals.
There are lots of strategies. “But,” Roy writes, “the pattern stays the same: meet, merge, and create something new.” Studiously avoiding direct references to human reproduction in her narrative (though covering it in her author’s note), Roy opens with simple language and then goes on to explain in greater detail how various flora and fauna accomplish each element in the pattern—from attracting mates (“Future Prince,” reads a sign next to a frog) and making gametes to creating external seeds and eggs or internal safe spaces for early stages of development, leading up to birth. Her language is specific enough to include terms like uterus and amnion, and, though she’s not above putting party hats on a newly hatched snake, in general she depicts the insides and outsides of her figures with naturalistic precision, adding select but helpful anatomical labels and explanatory captions. Her fulsome backmatter includes suggestions for backyard nature study and a detailed account of the “incredible dance moves” performed by splitting chromosomes during meiosis. Meanwhile, glimpses early on of a possibly biracial pregnant couple with a child that culminate in a closing double gatefold view of their arrival at a picnic attended by people diverse in age and skin color silently add a certain other species to the lineup.
A perennially hot topic explored with a deft mix of specific details and light touches. (glossary, selected sources, list of species that appear in the book) (Nonfiction. 6-11)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781324015840
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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