A nicely balanced combination of guessing game and scientific facts.
Soaring rhymes celebrate wings of many sorts as an equally diverse cast of bright-eyed young children look on.
“Small wings, big wings, near and far. / Can you guess whose wings these are?” Offering tantalizing hints about each example until a page turn reveals the answer, Hirsch writes of honeybees and katydids, hummingbirds and mallards—but also expands her topic well beyond bugs and birds to encompass winged things from maple seeds to pterosaurs and jet planes. As she explains in a substantial afterword, each uses wings in distinctive ways. Penguin chicks don’t fly, for instance, but steer with their flippers as they toboggan down ice slopes on their bellies, and butterflies flap in a figure-eight pattern, clapping their wings to create a propulsive puff of air. Individual readers and listening audiences alike will come away understanding the structural differences between the wings of bats and birds, not to mention how lift can be created by both wing curvature and by the “tiny tornado” that forms over the flat surface of a maple “whirlybird.” Han mixes brightly hued close-ups of flora and fauna with views of small children immersed in peaceful natural settings, being strapped into their seats, or, in one fetching scene, donning wings themselves to flit cheerily about.
A nicely balanced combination of guessing game and scientific facts. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781419769252
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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