An inspiring account for aspiring environmentalists and photographers.
Brazilian photographer and environmental activist Sebastião Salgado used his camera to galvanize the world.
Growing up in the lush Mata Atlântica forest of Brazil, Sebastião cultivated a respect for nature early. That sentiment stayed with him even after he moved to São Paulo and then, after speaking out against the government, fled to Paris, where he took his first photograph. When his work as an economist sent him to Rwanda, he discovered that images were better than reports at telling a more complete story about the people, their lives, and the land. He became a globe-traveling professional photographer, documenting everything from protests for labor rights to wars to environmental destruction. When he returned to Rwanda, the country was in the midst of civil war. The violence affected him so deeply that he retired from photography. He and his wife, Lélia, returned to the Brazilian farm of his childhood to heal, only to find his childhood paradise ravaged by the timber industry. They set out to reforest the land. When the forest began to recover, Sebastião returned to his camera and traveled the world, documenting humans’ relationship with nature. Major events in Sebastião’s life are competently presented for young audiences, with clear chains of cause and effect. Throughout, Hoelzel explores the theme of humanity’s place within nature. The watercolor and pencil illustrations are lush and engrossing, and the many double-page illustrations create an immersive experience.
An inspiring account for aspiring environmentalists and photographers. (author’s note, about Instituto Terra, information on the Mata Atlântica, partial list of Sebastião’s awards and honors, select photographic essays produced by Sebastião and Lélia Salgado, bibliography and other sources, map) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781534477650
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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