Children (and adults) who like unusual illustration styles will be entranced by these creatively depicted creatures....
This British import provides a brief introduction to the animal world with depictions of 12 different creatures in striking illustrations, with a short paragraph of description for each.
An arresting cover image portrays a springbok staring out at readers, with the animal’s body filled in with a scrap of flowered fabric and metallic gold highlights ornamenting its horns. The title is set in metallic gold letters, and touches of gold add highlights throughout. Enchanting illustrations are the book’s dominant feature, with a distinctive style combining pen and ink, watercolor washes, and fabric and wallpaper scraps. These disparate elements are used in combination to show swimming sea turtles with curious expressions, floating butterflies, and a school of smiling herring. Snow geese wear pink wallpaper patterns, and zebras appear with the usual black-and-white stripes as well as alternative patterns of polka dots and diamonds. There is no logical flow to the arrangement of the different animals, birds, fish, and insects, with a rather jarring effect as the environments move arbitrarily from water to land to air and back again. The text’s sentence length and vocabulary make this book suitable for school-age children, and the descriptions are composed of interesting snippets of information rather than a comprehensive overview.
Children (and adults) who like unusual illustration styles will be entranced by these creatively depicted creatures. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-5713-3068-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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