Simplistic and heavy-handed.
A picture book about compassion for the animals that share the planet.
The story starts with a double-page spread showing a diversity of humans all jumbled together facing readers, relaying the idea that humans come in different shapes, sizes, and colors (and dispositions and beliefs) yet are all neighbors, planetarily speaking. The page turn then extends this idea to the diversity of animals and, not unpredictably, shows a double-page spread of a jumble of different animals facing readers. In the same back-and-forth vein, the story continues by pointing out that humans use “intelligence” to survive while animals have different, other skills to help them—an off-key anthropocentric viewpoint that assumes animals aren’t intelligent. This off-key note continues with a confusing illustration that attempts to highlight animals’ and humans’ “wildly different likes and needs,” wherein humans are shown using aids to accomplish what animals do naturally. But, in a pivot, it seems we don’t have such “wildly different likes and needs” after all, since the story concludes, “you have more in common with your neighbors than you think,” and lists those common needs: “food and water…clean air and shelter…family and friendship,” among others. The book’s intention is good-hearted, but the execution is messy, and that extends to many of the illustrations, which are flat in their colors and unnuanced in their line and interpretation. The backmatter unsubtly advocates for vegetarianism.
Simplistic and heavy-handed. (resources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61180-723-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bala Kids/Shambhala
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
Markle invites children to picture themselves living in the homes of 11 wild animals.
As in previous entries in the series, McWilliam’s illustrations of a diverse cast of young people fancifully imitating wild creatures are paired with close-up photos of each animal in a like natural setting. The left side of one spread includes a photo of a black bear nestling in a cozy winter den, while the right side features an image of a human one cuddled up with a bear. On another spread, opposite a photo of honeybees tending to newly hatched offspring, a human “larva” lounges at ease in a honeycomb cell, game controller in hand, as insect attendants dish up goodies. A child with an eye patch reclines on an orb weaver spider’s web, while another wearing a head scarf constructs a castle in a subterranean chamber with help from mound-building termites. Markle adds simple remarks about each type of den, nest, or burrow and basic facts about its typical residents, then closes with a reassuring reminder to readers that they don’t have to live as animals do, because they will “always live where people live.” A select gallery of traditional homes, from igloo and yurt to mudhif, follows a final view of the young cast waving from a variety of differently styled windows.
Another playful imagination-stretcher. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.
A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.
Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5625-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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