When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way.
Flatt’s latest, the third in the Math in Nature series, encourages children to use math to measure.
Measuring with nonstandard units found in nature—footprints in the snow, otters in lakes, piles of porcupine leftovers—Flatt and Barron encourage children to look at the world in new ways. But this way of measuring may also confuse very young readers, for whom the book is best suited: “How far do flakes fall? / Is it one length for all? / The distance depends / on the start and the end.” One question on this spread asks readers to count “[h]ow many snowflakes deep is the snow?” The grid of blue, gray and purple flakes provides the answer—eight—but it doesn’t have any basis in reality. Other pages are more successful, encouraging readers to measure using the birds at two birdfeeders, bringing up the issue of the size of the measuring units—each is four birds long, but chickadees and cardinals are different sizes, as are their feeders. Distance, area, capacity, mass, time and comparisons round out the volume, which asks good questions, but children already need to have a good grasp of those concepts in order to answer them. Barron’s stunning cut-paper collages are the highlight of the book, while backmatter provides a paragraph of information about each of the featured creatures.
When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way. (Math picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-926973-82-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers.
Echoing the meter of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Ward uses catchy original rhymes to describe the variety of nests birds create.
Each sweet stanza is complemented by a factual, engaging description of the nesting habits of each bird. Some of the notes are intriguing, such as the fact that the hummingbird uses flexible spider web to construct its cup-shaped nest so the nest will stretch as the chicks grow. An especially endearing nesting behavior is that of the emperor penguin, who, with unbelievable patience, incubates the egg between his tummy and his feet for up to 60 days. The author clearly feels a mission to impart her extensive knowledge of birds and bird behavior to the very young, and she’s found an appealing and attractive way to accomplish this. The simple rhymes on the left page of each spread, written from the young bird’s perspective, will appeal to younger children, and the notes on the right-hand page of each spread provide more complex factual information that will help parents answer further questions and satisfy the curiosity of older children. Jenkins’ accomplished collage illustrations of common bird species—woodpecker, hummingbird, cowbird, emperor penguin, eagle, owl, wren—as well as exotics, such as flamingoes and hornbills, are characteristically naturalistic and accurate in detail.
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers. (author’s note, further resources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2116-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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