A solid primer on fostering human-feline relations.
A young Twitter and Instagram sensation imparts whiskery wisdom.
Kidd and his mother, Braunigan, who created the social media accounts “I’ve Pet That Cat” on the heels of Kidd’s older brother’s “I’ve Pet That Dog,” offer advice and information aimed at helping youngsters cozy up to kitties. With ample colorful and inviting line drawings by Hoffmann, the book begins with a chapter on how to go about petting a strange cat, then covers how to approach, where to pet (stay away from the belly), and even how to pick up the cat if things are going well. Kidd and Braunigan provide sound guidance on interpreting cat sounds and body language and explain some feline behaviors. There is a brief history of cat-human relations and several short biographies of famous or heroic cats. Instructions for choosing and caring for a cat and an interview with a cat expert follow. A quiz helps the reader discover their cat personality, and there’s a log to keep track of the cats encountered. The book is dotted with “Tips From Nigel” and “Feline Facts,” and myth busters disprove common misconceptions (no, cats don’t actually enjoy milk). The artwork depicts a diverse group of people interacting with cats.
A solid primer on fostering human-feline relations. (sources) (Nonfiction. 6-12)Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68369-314-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
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
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