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A PANDEMIC IS WORLDWIDE

Name: A PANDEMIC IS WORLDWIDE
Author: Sarah L. Thomson
ISBN: 978-0-06-308632-6

From the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series , Vol. 2

by Sarah L. Thomson ; illustrated by Taia Morley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 22, 2022

A gently worded explainer for young readers looking for answers.

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Young readers gain insight into what pandemic means.

Previous generations of youngsters may not have been familiar with the word pandemic, but today’s youngsters surely are. News of the global coronavirus outbreak has unavoidably reached young ears, and this offering joins a growing crop of picture books designed to shed light on the momentous and confusing situation. Opening with a digestible lesson on how pandemics develop and a brief historical overview of medical plagues of the past, the text then turns a microscope on the Covid-19 virus—its physical symptoms, social effects, and what people can do to curb its spread. The roles of vaccine development and scientific advances in the field of immunology are highlighted throughout the book. The illustrations of earnest doctors administering vaccines to willing children will rub anti-vaxxers the wrong way, but the wholesome overarching message of “we’re all in this together” will play well to the intended audience. Morley’s colorful art, which uses a combination of watercolor and digital techniques, depicts few characters of color; authority figures and most characters present as White.

A gently worded explainer for young readers looking for answers. (glossary, timeline, hand-washing diagram) (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-308632-6

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GRIFFIN'S BOY
by Sarah L. Thomson ; illustrated by Anna Aparicio Català

- BOOK REVIEW
TWO FRIENDS, ONE DOG, AND A VERY UNUSUAL WEEK
by Sarah L. Thomson ; illustrated by Vin Vogel

- BOOK REVIEW
SAVE THE...ELEPHANTS
by Sarah L. Thomson & Chelsea Clinton

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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ANIMAL ARCHITECTS

From the Amazing Animals series

by Amy Cherrix ; illustrated by Chris Sasaki ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2021

An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.

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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)