bookshelf

CONSTRUCTION PEOPLE

Name: CONSTRUCTION PEOPLE
Author: Lee Bennett Hopkins
ISBN: 978-1-68437-361-1

edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins ; illustrated by Ellen Shi ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

A lovely foundation for forays into poetry and for building a love of buildings.

bookshelf

Fourteen poems capture a skyscraper’s construction, from beginning to completion, in vivid detail.

In the first verse, by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, the nascent high-rise, narrating from an empty lot, excitedly contemplates its future: the workers and materials its construction will entail and how it will eventually ascend to lofty heights; in the last, also by Dotlich, the finished structure proudly announces its presence on the “spectacular skyline.” The remaining robust poems, each by a different contributor and presented on double-page spreads, describe the various skilled jobs and professionals involved in a skyscraper’s planning and building and also—take note, vehicle mavens—the trucks required at a construction site. Apart from enjoying jaunty rhymes that scan well and include numerous delightful turns of phrase, readers gain insight into the many workers who collaborate on a new building’s successful, safe skyward climb. Additionally, children will build their vocabularies with nifty words like “glaziers” and “welders.” Onomatopoeia is used to good, dramatic effect where applicable. Lively, appealing artwork grounds this collection: Many of its action-filled illustrations also highlight verticals and horizontals. Women are well represented throughout as skilled, busy professionals in various nonstereotypical or supervisory positions. Workers are depicted with varied skin tones, hairstyles, and racial presentations, including the female Asian architect and her daughter, recurring characters. Endpapers are rich ocher, the color of soil.

A lovely foundation for forays into poetry and for building a love of buildings. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-68437-361-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills

Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
BLESS OUR PETS
edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins ; illustrated by Lita Judge

- BOOK REVIEW
NIGHT WISHES
edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins ; illustrated by Jen Corace

- BOOK REVIEW
I REMEMBER
edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins

- PERSPECTIVES
Picture Books + Poetry = Lucky Readers

bookshelf

BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

bookshelf

A PLACE FOR RAIN

by Michelle Schaub ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2024

Enticing and eco-friendly.

bookshelf

Why and how to make a rain garden.

Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.

Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)