Absorbing and enlightening.
The Caldecott-winning duo offers eye-opening insights into some nonobvious animal behaviors and features.
Nineteen creatures, arranged in no obvious order, strike dignified poses in full-body or partial views here, but readers may be just as taken by the accompanying nature notes. There, the co-authors/illustrators supply several answers to the titular question and a few speculative benefits about zebras’ stripes, for instance; they go on to explain why bats hang upside down and provide credible reasons why wombat poop is cube-shaped and why hippos fling theirs far and wide with their tails. For budding naturalists with a need for further details, the animals are measured for scale by small adjacent silhouettes matched to human ones; fuller accounts of size, weight, diet, and habitat are included in a closing section. Co-author/illustrator Jenkins died in 2021, which may explain why some of the art, such as a rather diaphanous naked mole rat and a sketchy red-eyed tree frog, has an unfinished feel; still, the majestic dromedary, an extreme close-up of a giant squid’s eye, and even a giraffe represented by just a segment of neck are astonishingly realistic and aglow with the presence that marks Jenkins’ best work. A bibliography closes out the work.
Absorbing and enlightening. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780316456791
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
Markle invites children to picture themselves living in the homes of 11 wild animals.
As in previous entries in the series, McWilliam’s illustrations of a diverse cast of young people fancifully imitating wild creatures are paired with close-up photos of each animal in a like natural setting. The left side of one spread includes a photo of a black bear nestling in a cozy winter den, while the right side features an image of a human one cuddled up with a bear. On another spread, opposite a photo of honeybees tending to newly hatched offspring, a human “larva” lounges at ease in a honeycomb cell, game controller in hand, as insect attendants dish up goodies. A child with an eye patch reclines on an orb weaver spider’s web, while another wearing a head scarf constructs a castle in a subterranean chamber with help from mound-building termites. Markle adds simple remarks about each type of den, nest, or burrow and basic facts about its typical residents, then closes with a reassuring reminder to readers that they don’t have to live as animals do, because they will “always live where people live.” A select gallery of traditional homes, from igloo and yurt to mudhif, follows a final view of the young cast waving from a variety of differently styled windows.
Another playful imagination-stretcher. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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