Amusing but lacking.
From the Big Bang to you, in 40 pages.
It’s clear from the cover that Bunting has set his sights pretty high: “Your Story from the BIG BANG to Your BIRTHDAY” greets readers at the top of the cover and on the title page. He jumps right in, too—in the first seven pages, readers learn that before the Big Bang, the entire universe was condensed into a space smaller than an orange before exploding into a multitude of (amusingly multilingual) particles with googly eyes. From there, readers are presented with a truncated history of the sciences, from physics to evolution. Educators or caregivers should brace themselves for the flurry of questions that the text invites. The illustrations—a mix of gouache and acrylic—are mostly helpful but may mislead in their necessary simplification. The largest visual misconception is that animals have evolved in a direct line from single-celled organisms to humans. The text intimates at branching (“And from an ancestor we share with chimps, we slowly evolved into the species we are today”), but that’s not supported by the illustrations, which imply something much more linear. Sadly, the text has also been overly simplified in some places. For example, in a discussion of pregnancy, “somewhere inside your mom’s tummy” fails both to recognize gender complexity and to use anatomically accurate language.
Amusing but lacking. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42344-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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