A story that features a clear educational message and diverse, engaging characters, with an aspiring scientist at its center.
A young science enthusiast discovers a spider and shares her excitement with her parents and classmates in Norton’s debut middle-grade novel.
Fifth-grader Madeleine Morales is known to all as “Muddy” after a messy incident at a nearby pond. When she discovers a large spider building a web outside her house, she’s instantly enamored and determined to learn everything she can about the arachnid’s habits and habitat. Muddy gets help in her pursuit of knowledge from her parents, despite Papá’s aversion to arachnids; from her teacher, who introduces new subjects with rap lyrics; and from a diverse collection of classmates. Muddy is devastated when the spider, which she named Hilandera, goes missing after a few days, but she uses further research and hypothesis-testing to discover what happened. The book’s character diversity feels natural rather than forced, and Muddy’s closest friends—Gregory, always on the hunt for snacks; Ava, who has a fondness for bathroom humor; and Javier, a devoted pet owner—make a delightful crew that’s willing to indulge Muddy’s new fascination with spiders before dragging her off for another romp in the pond. The book is sometimes a bit too enamored of its own turns of phrase; “arach-a-doo,” for example, is Ava’s rendering of “arachnid,” and after Muddy identifies a shape in Hilandera’s web as a “zigzaggin’ zipper,” she uses that label every time she refers to it. However, Norton does an effective job of introducing educational vocabulary without becoming didactic. Muddy’s blend of Spanish and English flows naturally, although one of Norton’s word choices may be inappropriate for some markets: in the book’s Mexican- and Central American-influenced Spanish,“bicho” is the appropriate word for the insects that make up Hilandera’s diet, but to Puerto Rican readers, that same word is a reference to male anatomy. This isn’t addressed in the book’s glossaries, which provide pronunciations and definitions for the Spanish words and the scientific terms throughout the text.
A story that features a clear educational message and diverse, engaging characters, with an aspiring scientist at its center.Pub Date: March 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940834-29-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Progressive Rising Phoenix Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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