Dive headfirst into the lush pages of this rainforest read.
Join the lively (and moist) celebration of one of the rainforest’s most overlooked habitats: the bromeliad pool.
Rain dances down through the dense canopy, forming a small puddle on the leaf of a bromeliad plant (“A bro-ma-what?” asks a nearby insect). And just like that, invitations to the miniature pool party are spread far and wide. Though it may not seem like much, this tiny puddle is absolutely brimming with life. A tree frog starts off the festivities by laying her eggs in the pool, followed by algae and microbes that feast on “party platters of decomposing leaves.” Before long, everything from tiny protozoa to whooping howler monkeys have joined the soiree, using the pool as a source of food or shelter. Cool blues and rich greens burst from the acrylic, marker, and pencil collage illustrations, featuring cute critters that pop from the page. Full visual spreads with individually labeled creatures complement comic-style panels with quippy speech bubbles and bouncing prose, like the “millipedes [that] mingled in moss.” Changing scenes, shifting palettes, and headings indicate the passage of time throughout the year’s changing seasons. Certain to appeal to the most curious of readers, this stunning addition to the Tiny Habitats series will make a wonderful storytime offering.
Dive headfirst into the lush pages of this rainforest read. (more about bromeliad pools, additional reading, selected sources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781665935043
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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