An eminently child-friendly exploration of an ever-intriguing subject; pair it with David M. Schwartz and Steven Kellogg’s...
Jellybean-fueled sibling rivalry leads readers on a visual exploration of large numbers.
Emma's request for 10 is reasonable, as is Aiden’s for 20, but, auction-style, the numbers soon mount from 100 to 500, at which point Emma calls Aiden’s bluff. “That’s too many. You can’t eat five hundred jelly beans.” Well, he could eat 1,000 in a year, but that’s just two or three per day. How about 5,000 in a year? That would be a stack that’s as high as a 10-story building. As the two ponder this existential conundrum, the numbers keep going up, from 10,000 to 100,000 to 1,000,000. Labat’s black-and-white digital illustrations make the bright colors of the ever-increasing jellybeans stand out and pop off the pages. The speech bubbles, clean lines and efficiently drawn characters speak to his start in comics. The page depicting how Aiden would divvy 100,000 jellybeans among the different flavors works especially well, picturing single-color circles clearly labeled with the differing amounts (there's only one lemon jellybean). This helps readers learn to estimate, though Bruce Goldstone’s Great Estimations and Greater Estimations (2006, 2008) offer more specific examples.
An eminently child-friendly exploration of an ever-intriguing subject; pair it with David M. Schwartz and Steven Kellogg’s How Much Is a Million. (Math picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4521-0206-1
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A serviceable introduction to monarch migration, with some bumps along the journey.
Ready for an adventure?
Young readers follow several eastern monarchs as they make a multigenerational migration across North America. The story begins with a pearl necklace–wearing butterfly laying an egg on a milkweed leaf. Soon a very ravenous caterpillar emerges, eats, grows, and begins her metamorphosis. This new protagonist sports a high-buttoned lacy collar as she travels. After a page turn, the third generation is introduced (this one in a ruffled collar), and we follow her amorous adventures until she also lays an egg, one that produces the final protagonist, complete with a lavaliere. This final butterfly travels onward, completing the circuit started by her great-grandparents. The book is narrated in a rhyme scheme that reads fairly well aloud, although the rhyming pattern fluctuates, and the thin font can be easily missed on some of the busier illustrations. The artwork, a mix of traditional and digital techniques, is attractive, though the various butterflies are differentiated only by changing neckwear designs—which may be a whisper too subtle for young readers. The changeover between generations is quick; readers who aren’t paying close attention may miss these crucial shifts. A page of backmatter offers more information on these butterflies and the dangers they face.
A serviceable introduction to monarch migration, with some bumps along the journey. (map) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781665943420
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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