A solid worker for any library collection, but this wouldn’t make it as the queen
A green-themed instructive read, this will have nature enthusiasts buzzing.
The cover tagline is “Explore, create, and investigate!” and that’s what young environmentalists may be influenced to do after working with this hybrid biology-STEM-craft-trivia offering. It combines educational tips with bee-themed activities that vary from scientific experiments (one encourages kids to observe what colors bees like best) to such crafts as “Make a Fuzzy Bumble Bee.” Quigley attempts to capture everything bee-related in this offering, and that all-in approach may overwhelm casual readers. Bee-themed poetry and Thai honeybee folklore intermingle with housing suggestions for bumblebees and recipes for seed bombs. Librarians and educators may find the book most inspiring, as swarms of bee-themed lesson plans and bulletin boards for the pre-K crowd fly off the page. An index and glossary make up the backmatter, but a pronunciation guide and list of further readings and citations would have sweetened the text. Morgan’s digital illustrations are bright and attractive, but readers may wish there were labels identifying specific flower names and geographic locations. For example, the map of “Bees Around the World” is more of a geographic suggestion that actual cartography. Morgan’s attempts to hint at diversity among the human characters are fair but limited—in a book this colorful, having only two skin tones seems uninspired.
A solid worker for any library collection, but this wouldn’t make it as the queen . (Nonfiction. 5-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68297-149-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: QEB Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
More thoughtful, sometimes exhilarating encounters with nature.
In a new entry in the Over and Under series, a paddleboarder glimpses humpback whales leaping, floats over a populous kelp forest, and explores life on a beach and in a tide pool.
In this tale inspired by Messner’s experiences in Monterey Bay in California, a young tan-skinned narrator, along with their light-skinned mom and tan-skinned dad, observes in quiet, lyrical language sights and sounds above and below the sea’s serene surface. Switching perspectives and angles of view and often leaving the family’s red paddleboards just tiny dots bobbing on distant swells, Neal’s broad seascapes depict in precise detail bat stars and anchovies, kelp bass, and sea otters going about their business amid rocky formations and the swaying fronds of kelp…and, further out, graceful moon jellies and—thrillingly—massive whales in open waters beneath gliding pelicans and other shorebirds. After returning to the beach at day’s end to search for shells and to spot anemones and decorator crabs, the child ends with nighttime dreams of stars in the sky meeting stars in the sea. Appended nature notes on kelp and 21 other types of sealife fill in details about patterns and relationships in this rich ecosystem. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
More thoughtful, sometimes exhilarating encounters with nature. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-79720-347-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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