Excellent for fledgling naturalists.
“In this book, you’ll find out…about birds…from those you see every day to strange birds, and you’ll discover how you can become a bird-watcher.”
Following Plants (2020), Bugs, and Trees (both 2019), Hickman and Gavin have produced another worthy addition to children’s nature shelves, this one focusing on birds that can be observed in Canada and the United States. The text is accessible and graceful. Each short chapter, illustrated with Gavin’s signature, appealing watercolors, has just enough information to whet the appetite for more. Readers are unlikely to forget, for example, that baby herring gulls tap on that red spot on a parent’s beak to release the chick’s food. As in other books in the series, chapters about each season provide an organic way to introduce or flesh out such basic concepts as migration, pollination, and camouflage. Less-common concepts are also clearly explained, as in “determinate” versus “indeterminate layers.” (Yes, some birds keep replacing damaged eggs until they reach a set number.) Occasional sidebars entitled “Strange Birds” mention highly unusual behaviors of specific varieties, including the northern shrike’s impalement of edible victims on thorns to compensate for its tiny, weak feet. Other than that possibly shudder-inducing fact, the text spends most of its time on birds that eat fish, insects, and seeds. Following a formula that works, other pages devote themselves to human threats and remedies, hints for elementary bird-watching, and a craft project. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Excellent for fledgling naturalists. (contents, glossary, index) (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77138-818-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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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