Irresistible science.
Why is it that some animals eat poop but we find it gross?
Using a variety of examples, the author illustrates that coprophagy, the consumption of feces, is not uncommon among animals—and that poop eaters have good reasons for this seemingly disgusting habit. The main narrative is simple enough for fledgling readers, while explanatory text boxes on each spread add more specific information for more advanced readers. Animals eat, or at least engage with, feces to strengthen their eggs, to clean their babies’ nests, to encourage their young to pee and poop themselves, or even as part of their digestive process. For dung beetles, it’s their diet, and for our own pets…who knows? Maybe they just like the taste! Cheerful cartoon animals slurp puddles of poop, carry fecal sacks (depicted as white tied bundles), lick their babies’ backsides, and seem to enjoy a variety of poop pellets. Stylized humans with varying skin tones and hair colors, however, turn up their noses no matter how it’s served. We don’t eat poop because our bodies don’t need it; indeed, it might make us sick. Levine knows how to grab young readers’ attention and explain science topics simply but effectively. And while Weiser’s illustrations are entertaining, they’re also enlightening—her digestive system diagrams are particularly edifying. There’s even more information about the subject in the backmatter, pictures for aspiring “poop detectives,” and plenty of poopy words.
Irresistible science. (further reading) (Informational picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781728457963
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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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