Lurid design detracts from the helpful message that even ugly, scary animals deserve protection.
An invitation to consider the title question through descriptions of 17 animals with monstrous features or habits.
Keating and DeGrand follow up Pink Is for Blobfish (2016) with another collection from the world of weird animals. Here they look at a wide variety of species, including human beings. Examples stretch broadly across the animal kingdom, even including brain-controlling fungi and the animal cooperative that makes up the organism known as the Portuguese man-of-war. Not all are obviously scary; the “sweet little prairie dog” is included as its fleas can carry bubonic plague. Each example is presented on a garishly colored double-page spread and illustrated with both a photograph and a cartoon. In the case of the secretive aye-aye, the images obscure or mis-illustrate its most salient feature, the elongated, rotator-jointed and claw-tipped middle finger on both “hands” that allows the aye-aye to probe inside a tree for grubs. Each spread offers a headline, one paragraph of description, a second with a curious fact, and a sidebar with proper and Latin names, size, diet, habitat, and predators and threats. A final spread connects famous monsters with some of these creatures but also asks readers to consider what they find frightening, whether the animal’s monstrous trait helps its survival, and whether they see human similarities.
Lurid design detracts from the helpful message that even ugly, scary animals deserve protection. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-51230-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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