Contemplative and stirring—definitely for wonderers.
Reflections on clouds and other wonders of our atmospheric “ocean.”
“This is a book for wonderers,” McClure accurately notes in her illustrator’s afterword. Originally written as a script for a children’s television show in 1956 and unpublished until 2021, Carson’s quietly eloquent essay offers a stirring mix of natural observations and insights. Our planet has two mighty oceans, she points out, both necessary for life. We live at the bottom of the one made of air, beneath clouds—described as “the writing of the wind on the sky”—that are born and die. After detailing the broad types—foggy stratus, flat-bottomed cumulus, and high-altitude cirrus—and the messages they convey in their distinctive forms and compositions, she concludes that the ocean of air, like the watery one, is still full of mysteries…but we are “learning to read the language of the sky.” Using sumi ink and washi paper with cut-paper overlays, the illustrator creates misty, evocative cloudscapes behind and above views of seas and mountains in various weathers and seasons, as well as spare glimpses of human figures diverse in terms of age, with skin the color of the page, mostly with inward gazes. Overall, the effect is solemn, stately…bound to leave readers in a meditative mood.
Contemplative and stirring—definitely for wonderers. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781536228700
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick Studio
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
The sense of wonder that infuses each simply worded chapter is contagious, and some of the photos are soooo cuuuuute.
The author of an adult book about uncommon animal attachments invites emergent readers to share the warm (Unlikely Friendships, 2011).
This is the first of four spinoffs, all rewritten and enhanced with fetching color photographs of the subject. It pairs a very young rhesus monkey with a dove, one cat with a zoo bear and another that became a “seeing-eye cat” for a blind dog (!), an old performing elephant with a stray dog and a lion in the Kenyan wild with a baby oryx. Refreshingly, the author, a science writer, refrains from offering facile analyses of the relationships’ causes or homiletic commentary. Instead, she explains how each companionship began, what is surprising about it and also how some ended, from natural causes or otherwise. There is a regrettable number of exclamation points, but they are in keeping with the overall enthusiastic tone.
The sense of wonder that infuses each simply worded chapter is contagious, and some of the photos are soooo cuuuuute. (animal and word lists) (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7611-7011-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental...
Pollution, energy use, and simply throwing things away have created a worldwide mess that kids can help clean up with an eight-step action plan.
This well-meant offering introduces the idea of the interconnectedness of human activities and the state of our world. We’re all affected by pollution. Our need for energy results in a variety of current problems: unclean air, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns. We should use less. Trash doesn’t vanish; it must be burned or dumped. We should also recycle. This helps save trees, which “eat up pollution.” Colorful, unsophisticated cartoons show a bunny magician who cannot make trash disappear and a diverse array of young people who can. The author’s strong message is undercut by end matter that twice states that “many scientists” consider climate change to be caused by global warming. A National Academy of Sciences survey in 2010 showed an overwhelming consensus: 97 percent. Inspired by her concern for the environment, Kondonassis wrote this when she was unable to find an appropriate book that would explain to her young daughter why she should care. Too bad she missed Kim Michelle Toft’s The World That We Want (2005) or Todd Parr’s The Earth Book (2010).
The result of this Grammy-nominated harpist’s effort to simplify a complex scientific subject is a medley of environmental tweets. (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61608-588-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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