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THIS IS THE TREE

Name: THIS IS THE TREE
Author: Miriam Moss
ISBN: 0-916291-98-7

by Miriam Moss & illustrated by Adrienne Kennaway ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2000

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The text may not be quite up to the pictures in this lyrical tribute to the baobab, but children will come away with at least a glimpse of the astonishing biological microcosm that grows on and near these monumental fixtures of the African plains. Wildlife positively teems in Kennaway’s clean-lined, brightly hued close-ups: great gray elephants, a regal leopard, pink and purple lizards, clusters of exotic looking birds and insects, all dependent in one way or another on the huge, long-lived, oddly upside-down-looking tree. Despite a closing spread of facts in brief, however, much of that wildlife remains unidentified, and readers will stumble over lines like, “snake snoozes softly with one beady eye,” or “delicious sweet white pulp that tastes just like wine gums!” Until Barbara Bash’s Tree of Life (1989) comes back into print, if it does, consider this a useful, attractive placeholder. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-916291-98-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Kane Miller

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
GIRL ON A PLANE
by Miriam Moss

- BOOK REVIEW
THIS IS THE MOUNTAIN
by Miriam Moss illustrated by Adrienne Kennaway

- BOOK REVIEW
A BABYSITTER FOR BILLY BEAR
by Miriam Moss & illustrated by Anna Currey

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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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

THE FANTASTIC UNDERSEA LIFE OF JACQUES COUSTEAU

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THE FANTASTIC UNDERSEA LIFE OF JACQUES COUSTEAU

by Dan Yaccarino & illustrated by Dan Yaccarino ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 2009

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This second early biography of Cousteau in a year echoes Jennifer Berne’s Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau (2008), illustrated by Eric Puybaret, in offering visuals that are more fanciful than informational, but also complements it with a focus less on the early life of the explorer and eco-activist than on his later inventions and achievements. In full-bleed scenes that are often segmented and kaleidoscopic, Yaccarino sets his hook-nosed subject amid shoals of Impressionistic fish and other marine images, rendered in multiple layers of thinly applied, imaginatively colored paint. His customarily sharp, geometric lines take on the wavy translucence of undersea shapes with a little bit of help from the airbrush. Along with tracing Cousteau’s undersea career from his first, life-changing, pair of goggles and the later aqualung to his minisub Sea Flea, the author pays tribute to his revolutionary film and TV work, and his later efforts to call attention to the effects of pollution. Cousteau’s enduring fascination with the sea comes through clearly, and can’t help sparking similar feelings in readers. (chronology, source list) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)