Best shared one on one to help listeners distinguish between fact and fancy.
How do animals wind down before bed?
Using straightforward bits of information and quirky illustrations, this lively title describes the sleep habits of 11 animals. An opening spread of all the animals together sets a whimsical tone: A kangaroo wearing flip-flops suns itself on a mat; a seal and a flamingo argue over a pillow. Bartikova then devotes a spread to each of the animals. Short, factual sentences detail where each creature lives, as well as when and where it sleeps and for how long. These specifics are interspersed among humorous cartoon images of the heavily anthropomorphized animals. Many illustrations include cutaways. Jammie-clad gerbils nod off in their burrow, while their kin cavort in the desert setting above; seals read books and sip tropical drinks above the water, while others snooze below the surface. Some of the humor will go over youngsters’ heads, like a bat reading Freud. Though this Czech import includes the kind of information that children are interested in, it lacks sources or further references. The book also contains a few errors: Seals live in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, not just the Northern Hemisphere. An image of an ant with a feather on its head, carrying a quiver full of arrows, may raise eyebrows due to its flattening depiction of Native cultures.
Best shared one on one to help listeners distinguish between fact and fancy. (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9788000072821
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Albatros Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer.
Rotner follows up her celebrations of spring and autumn with this look at all things winter.
Beginning with the signs that winter is coming—bare trees, shorter days, colder temperatures—Rotner eases readers into the season. People light fires and sing songs on the solstice, trees and plants stop growing, and shadows grow long. Ice starts to form on bodies of water and windows. When the snow flies, the fun begins—bundle up and then build forts, make snowballs and snowmen (with eyebrows!), sled, ski (nordic is pictured), skate, snowshoe, snowboard, drink hot chocolate. Animals adapt to the cold as well. “Birds grow more feathers” (there’s nothing about fluffing and air insulation) and mammals, more hair. They have to search for food, and Rotner discusses how many make or find shelter, slow down, hibernate, or go underground or underwater to stay warm. One page talks about celebrating holidays with lights and decorations. The photos show a lit menorah, an outdoor deciduous tree covered in huge Christmas bulbs, a girl next to a Chinese dragon head, a boy with lit luminarias, and some fireworks. The final spread shows signs of the season’s shift to spring. Rotner’s photos, as always, are a big draw. The children are a marvelous mix of cultures and races, and all show their clear delight with winter.
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3976-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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