Strong visuals, but the topic gets, at best, a hasty once-over.
Questions and answers in prose and verse about clouds, rainbows, and other atmospheric phenomena.
Perron poses queries about why the sky is blue, what makes winds blow, and other meteorological topics. Quick explanations are provided in the next verse, and somewhat fuller ones are included toward the end. Throughout, the refrain “How I wonder, wonder why” anchors the text. Some rationales are clear enough: Winds arise when cool air rushes in to replace warmer air that has risen; lightning’s heat creates atmospheric shock waves that we hear as thunder. But Perron throws in terms such as wavelength and Coriolis effect without defining them. She states that rainbows appear “when sunlight hits a water droplet” but that clouds, made up of water droplets, “usually look white because they scatter all colors of lights equally”—which may leave readers more confused than enlightened. Still, the author’s invitation to marvel at the wonders overhead is compelling. Henderson’s vividly hued illustrations add drama as well as detail as they track a thunderstorm’s progress from sunny skies to darkening clouds, jagged lightning bolts amid heavy rain, arcing rainbows afterward, and at last a shimmering nightscape. When not portrayed as silhouettes, tiny human figures peering quizzically up at the sky’s natural beauties vary in skin tone.
Strong visuals, but the topic gets, at best, a hasty once-over. (Informational poetry picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063310421
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Hurray for the underdog.
Heart (-shaped surface feature) literally broken by its demotion from planet status, Pluto glumly conducts readers on a tour of the solar system.
You’d be bummed, too. Angrily rejecting the suggestions of “mean scientists” from Earth that “ice dwarf” or “plutoid” might serve as well (“Would you like to be called humanoid?”), Pluto drifts out of the Kuiper Belt to lead readers past the so-called “real” planets in succession. All sport faces with googly eyes in Keller’s bright illustrations, and distinct personalities, too—but also actual physical characteristics (“Neptune is pretty icy. And gassy. I’m not being mean, he just is”) that are supplemented by pages of “fun facts” at the end. Having fended off Saturn’s flirtation, endured Jupiter’s stormy reception (“Keep OFF THE GAS!”) and relentless mockery from the asteroids, and given Earth the cold shoulder, Pluto at last takes the sympathetic suggestion of Venus and Mercury to talk to the Sun. “She’s pretty bright.” A (what else?) warm welcome, plus our local star’s comforting reminders that every celestial body is unique (though “people talk about Uranus for reasons I don’t really want to get into”), and anyway, scientists are still arguing the matter because that’s what “science” is all about, mend Pluto’s heart at last: “Whatever I’m called, I’ll always be PLUTO!”
Hurray for the underdog. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1453-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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