An underwhelming account of a compelling conservationist.
On the banks of a river in northeastern India, a boy planted a forest.
In 1979, the Brahmaputra River flooded the island of Majuli. Jadav Payeng, a tribal boy, saw many water snakes wash up on the shore; with no trees for shelter, they died. Jadav asked his community for help planting trees. In response, they handed him a bag of seedlings and told him to do the work himself. After years of hard work, he turned a scattering of bamboo seedlings into a thriving forest that supported myriad tree species and became home to a variety of animals and birds. While tigers, rhinos, rabbits, and foxes enjoyed the fruits of his labor, humans were less enthusiastic, especially when a herd of elephants migrating through the newly planted jungle destroyed a village. Eventually, Jadav found a way to balance the needs of the humans, the wild creatures, and the river, which is now kept safe from flooding by a sturdy wall of trees. Jadav’s courage, strength, and dedication make him a fascinating protagonist, and the lush, painterly illustrations are lovely. However, the writing often feels lackluster, and the lack of additional context renders the narrative less exciting than it might otherwise have been—it’s not until the backmatter, for instance, that we learn that Jadav's work went unnoticed by most others until 2009, when a photographer happened upon the forest. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An underwhelming account of a compelling conservationist. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4505-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.
A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.
Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5625-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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