A life full of adventure with a lasting legacy.
An introduction to a prolific painter with a love for all species.
Marianne North was dissuaded by her family from playing music, cultivating her artistic talent, and pursuing an education; her main job was to find a wealthy husband—someone like her father. But from her teens, Pop, as she was nicknamed, devoted her life to painting the flora and fauna of our world. North spent the majority of her adult life traveling to far-off places. When she finally ran out of room for her paintings in her own home in London, she opened a museum: the Marianne North Gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which was an instant success and is still open today—one of the oldest exhibitions by a woman artist in the world. Stadtlander’s artwork is intricate and full of detail. She includes almost every shade of green imaginable in her illustrations, which are lush and rich with life both extant and extinct. They depict the White protagonist alone during her travels. A double-page spread of North riding an elephant is exquisite and serene. The small print could pose difficulties for young readers reading this book alone, so it’s good that the illustrations’ colors are bright and bold enough for a group read-aloud. Plenty of backmatter makes this book an excellent starting point both for further research and to teach children how much work goes into creating a nonfiction book. North’s own paintings appear on the endpapers, fully attesting to her talent.
A life full of adventure with a lasting legacy. (biographical note, sources, source notes, character list) (Picture book/biography. 9-12)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3959-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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
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
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