An up-close look at species reintroduction for readers not quite ready for Jean Craighead George’s The Wolves are Back...
A family of Mexican gray wolves, the lobos of the title, born in captivity, are successfully returned to the wild.
Adapted from an essay in Wolf Haven: Sanctuary and the Future of Wolves in North America (2016), a book of striking photographs for adults, this stand-alone title shows and tells the story of a family, beginning with a pair of parents, “Mother and Father Wolf” and their newborn pups. After a year of growth, the family is transported from their supervised sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest to a ranch in southern New Mexico. There, to everyone’s surprise, the mother gives birth to another litter. These wolves learn to hunt for themselves and are ultimately transported again, this time across the border to be set free in the Mexican wilderness, to augment an endangered population near extinction. Appealing photographs will inspire even fledgling readers to attempt this well-designed story of environmental good news. Each spread includes a full-bleed image or set of images and, usually, a vignette. Though set legibly in short lines, the poetic text includes some challenging vocabulary. Pictures of human interactions are explained in the text, but the wolf pictures have no labels and are not always of the family described, hence the backmatter note, “based on the true story.” The backmatter also provides further information, a timeline, and resources.
An up-close look at species reintroduction for readers not quite ready for Jean Craighead George’s The Wolves are Back (illustrated by Wendell Minor, 2008). (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63217-084-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.
Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.
The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593616673
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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