After learning all about how bees count, readers will be counting on Mr. Tate’s class to give them another environmental...
Formento and Snow successfully collaborate again (This Tree Counts! 2010) as the environmentally aware Mr. Tate takes his class on a field trip to Busy Bee Farm.
As in their previous text, counting has a dual purpose, with “1, 2, 3” taking a backseat to education. This time, Farmer Ellen helps the children suit up in beekeeping gear, then teaches the class about bees, apiaries and pollination. She encourages the children to listen to the bees’ buzz about their work: “We find three wild strawberries bursting with sweetness. / Four apple blossoms tickle us with soft petals.” Readers learn along with the class how bees transform nectar into honey and how that honey is extracted. A final author’s note goes into more detail about the vital importance of honeybees to agriculture, as well as telling readers more fascinating facts about bees, including their dances, their hierarchy within the hive and the jobs they do. A final paragraph mentions colony collapse disorder. The digital look of the illustrations detracts slightly, catching readers between the nature theme of the text and the rather sterilized artwork. Still, the adventures of this multicultural class of kids are sure to interest readers, and Snow makes it easy to identify and count the items in the pictures.
After learning all about how bees count, readers will be counting on Mr. Tate’s class to give them another environmental armchair trip. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7868-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
A fun, educational science book that thoughtfully portrays kids of color engaging with and learning from nature and each...
In her latest science-focused picture book, Rockwell offers perspectives from two kids with opposing opinions about insects.
A Black girl with long braids and glasses announces her love of insects while a boy of Asian descent, who drops his sandwich running from two houseflies, says he hates them. Throughout this picture book, which teems with color and motion, the girl focuses on the positives, like their beauty, role as pollinators, and benefits to the soil, as the boy highlights the negatives, like their penchant for stinging, the ugliness of insects like fleas, and the damage some such as aphids do to plants. Readers can decide for themselves whether the two protagonists find some points of agreement. The final double-page spread illustrates all of the insects that appear in the book and invites readers to revisit earlier pages to find them, including butterflies, beetles, bees, a mosquito, a cricket, and more. This informational early reader employs a controlled vocabulary that intentionally repeats words and phrases to facilitate independent reading. Many recognizable insects appear in the book, like the field cricket and the bumblebee, but Rockwell also includes some, such as the little wood satyr butterfly and the cucumber beetle, that will pique curiosity and encourage budding entomologists to explore further to learn about bugs they’ve never met.
A fun, educational science book that thoughtfully portrays kids of color engaging with and learning from nature and each other. (Informational early reader. 4-7)Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4759-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding...
Beginning readers who tunnel through this upbeat first introduction will “dig” them too.
After an opening look at several kinds of worm (including the candy sort), McCloskey drills down to the nitty-gritty on earthworms. He describes how they help soil with their digging and “poop” (“EEW!”) and presents full-body inside and outside views with labeled parts. He also answers in the worms’ collective voice such questions as “Why do you come out after the rain?” and “How big is the biggest worm in the world?” that are posed by a multiethnic cast of intent young investigators in the cartoon illustrations. A persistent but frustrated bluebird’s “Yum, yum!!” and rejected invitations to lunch offer indirect references to worms as food sources, and reproductive details are likewise limited to oblique notes that worms have big families “born from cocoons.” Single scenes mingle with short sequences of panels in pictures that are drawn on brown paper bags for an appropriately earthy look.
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding naturalists. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-935179-80-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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