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 solid addition to the climate-change canon for those interested in saving a fragile world.
Dire consequences attend the unchecked melting of Arctic sea ice.
The more the ice melts, the more the Arctic climate changes. The more that air and ground temperatures rise, the more the frozen ecosystem’s inhabitants, including plants and insects, suffer from dwindling habitats; threats to food sources; and imbalances in feeding, breeding, and migration patterns. Solid information is packed into this brief work that lucidly raises the alarm for young readers, with each spread capturing the thrilling, chilling north in rich, dramatic blue swathes of seawater set off by icy glaciers and snowdrifts. Child-friendly, occasionally cluttered paintings, some with labels, highlight polar bears and their Arctic neighbors; a spread of vignettes illustrates how changes to plant life affect wildlife. One labeled spread explains all: As seawater warms, it absorbs sunlight, thus heating more water and melting more ice. One poignant spread depicts a bewildered polar bear mom, eyeing readers and flanked by her twin cubs, drifting on a shrinking ice floe. Two human children, one brown-skinned and one pale, occasionally appear in the illustrations as well. The book ends on a hopeful note, reassuring youngsters that “we still have time to save polar bears and slow the loss of Arctic ice.” A note in the backmatter offers conservation tips.
A solid addition to the climate-change canon for those interested in saving a fragile world. (author’s note, bibliography, additional sources) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-14319-8
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.
An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.
Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567784
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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