Light entertainment—a laudable attempt to connect the animal world to our human one, but it relies too much on...
Though different from humans in many ways, birds do many things people do.
Heos offers young readers and listeners a humorous way to make connections with the world of birds. Birds learn songs through baby talk and create varied sound effects. They try to attract their mates with fancy dancing. They build and decorate comfortable homes. Parents protect, feed, and clean up after their babies. (The intended audience may particularly enjoy the description of penguin crop milk—a regurgitated meal—and the idea that some birds eat their chicks’ fecal sacs.) They teach their chicks important skills. Many birds travel long distances. And they’re social, even having conversations as human beings do. The specific examples come from a wide range of bird species. They appear to have been chosen for their likely kid appeal rather than to reveal common bird behaviors. Some are behaviors that have only occasionally been observed or been observed only in captivity. This collection of far-fetched facts has been illustrated with a combination of photographs and caricatures of googly-eyed birds, sometimes engaged in human activities. A similar compilation, Just Like Us! Ants, is being published simultaneously.
Light entertainment—a laudable attempt to connect the animal world to our human one, but it relies too much on anthropomorphization to make its point. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-57044-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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
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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