Naturalist and wildlife watcher Hirschi (Dance With Me, 1995, etc.) celebrates the coming of day in a brief poetic text, with accompanying full-color photographs by Mangelsen. The team, which explored the seasons in previous collaborations: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, here describes the activities of animals in the early morning; and in a companion volume When Night Comes (ISBN: 1-56397-766-4), many of the same animals are presented as night falls. In each title the author shows the different ways similar animals adapt to their environment. For example, at daybreak some birds, like the heron and the hawk, hunt for food, while other night-hunting birds, like the owl, settle down to rest until dark. Butterflies, turtles, frogs, and other cold-blooded creatures begin to stir as the sun warms them, while warm-blooded animals, like bears and beavers, head for their dens to take a nap and avoid the heat of the day. The handsome photographs, placed on a glossy white background, show wildlife in natural settings in summer and winter. Night is especially appealing, with many photographs capturing the amber light of nightfall and impressive views of sunset turning sky and water a fiery-red orange. In a brief afterward, the author concludes with a brief afterward with advice for animal-watching. Children will enjoy this glimpse of the wild with foxes, martins, otters, owls, eagles, and bears. (Nonfiction. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-767-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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