LITTLE KIDS FIRST BIG BOOK OF HOW

Name: LITTLE KIDS FIRST BIG BOOK OF HOW
Author: Jill Esbaum
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2329-4

by Jill Esbaum ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2016

A scattershot assortment, easy on the eyes if only fitfully valuable for giving young inquiring minds the straight dope.

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From how a hair dryer works to how cheese, chocolate, and ice cream are made, Esbaum offers simple answers to over 50 common questions.

Some of her answers are a little too simple: it’s hard to see any real difference between the two types of doorbells she describes, not quite right to characterize what the taste buds sense as “sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or just plain yucky,” and dead wrong to claim that when a rocket “is high enough to have escaped Earth’s gravity it has reached space.” Moreover, though grouped into six broad categories such as “Food” and “The Animal Kingdom,” within their rubrics, the questions and their arrangement both feel entirely arbitrary. Still, the big, square format and many bright color photos of animals, objects, and young people at work and play will encourage extended browsing. Each section includes one or more simple activities, such as a yummy demonstration of tectonic mountain-building using moistened graham crackers over a bed of whipped cream, and also a pattern recognition game that builds on previously presented facts.

A scattershot assortment, easy on the eyes if only fitfully valuable for giving young inquiring minds the straight dope. (bibliography, index, parent tips) (Nonfiction. 6-8)

Pub Date: March 8, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4263-2329-4

Page Count: 128

Publisher: National Geographic Kids

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
PARROTFISH HAS A SUPERPOWER
by Jill Esbaum ; illustrated by Bob Shea

- BOOK REVIEW
BIRD GIRL
by Jill Esbaum ; illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon

- BOOK REVIEW
STINKBIRD HAS A SUPERPOWER
by Jill Esbaum ; illustrated by Bob Shea

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TOUCH THE EARTH

From the Julian Lennon White Feather Flier Adventure series , Vol. 1

by Julian Lennon with Bart Davis ; illustrated by Smiljana Coh ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2017

“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...

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A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.

Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”

“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: April 11, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sky Pony Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
HEAL THE EARTH
by Julian Lennon & Bart Davis ; illustrated by Smiljana Coh

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PLUTO GETS THE CALL

by Adam Rex ; illustrated by Laurie Keller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Hurray for the underdog.

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Heart (-shaped surface feature) literally broken by its demotion from planet status, Pluto glumly conducts readers on a tour of the solar system.

You’d be bummed, too. Angrily rejecting the suggestions of “mean scientists” from Earth that “ice dwarf” or “plutoid” might serve as well (“Would you like to be called humanoid?”), Pluto drifts out of the Kuiper Belt to lead readers past the so-called “real” planets in succession. All sport faces with googly eyes in Keller’s bright illustrations, and distinct personalities, too—but also actual physical characteristics (“Neptune is pretty icy. And gassy. I’m not being mean, he just is”) that are supplemented by pages of “fun facts” at the end. Having fended off Saturn’s flirtation, endured Jupiter’s stormy reception (“Keep OFF THE GAS!”) and relentless mockery from the asteroids, and given Earth the cold shoulder, Pluto at last takes the sympathetic suggestion of Venus and Mercury to talk to the Sun. “She’s pretty bright.” A (what else?) warm welcome, plus our local star’s comforting reminders that every celestial body is unique (though “people talk about Uranus for reasons I don’t really want to get into”), and anyway, scientists are still arguing the matter because that’s what “science” is all about, mend Pluto’s heart at last: “Whatever I’m called, I’ll always be PLUTO!”

Hurray for the underdog. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)