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YOUR AMAZING DIGESTION FROM MOUTH THROUGH INTESTINE

From plate to poop, / the inside scoop. What’s not to love? (index) (Informational poetry. 6-10)

What happens to food / once it’s been chewed.

There’s plenty of attention to chemical interactions and anatomical detail in these poems for all that they are cast in iambic couplets. They begin with the internal odyssey of a pizza slice, then go on to answer a number of pressing questions, from “Why Does Chili Make Me Sweat?” to “Why Does My Urine Come Out Yellow?” Breaking into prose for side comments and “Cool Facts” as she goes, Settel also covers such tasty topics as how laughing can make milk come out one’s nose, why garlic breath is so hard to get rid of, the ins and outs of farts and burps, the many uses of saliva, and the roles of various organs in digestion: “The liver’s bile is needed too, / as small intestines do not do / too well digesting fat without / a squirt of bile to help them out.” Björkman’s cartoons, all bright colors and loose, fluid lines, add a diversely hued cast of young folk exuberantly chowing down, throwing up, looking amazed or grossed out, and posing as models for labeled internal views. The bulky glossary and equally dense bibliography piled up at the end aim high; younger readers may find the five-item list of online animations and videos more palatable.

From plate to poop, / the inside scoop. What’s not to love? (index) (Informational poetry. 6-10)

Pub Date: July 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4814-8688-0

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019

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BUTT OR FACE?

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

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1001 BEES

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

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