Visually marvelous, like its subject—with a text more poetic than expository.
This latest collaboration between Fleming and Rohmann explores the elusive giant squid.
Fleming focuses as much on lingering unknowns as facts, introducing uncertainty in a poetic prologue: "Who are these giants of the dark seas?… // It is a mystery. // After all, how can you know / about an animal hidden from view? / You must rely on clues, / as scientists do...." Rohmann's full-bleed oil-on-paper pictures convey the squid's enormous size by capturing only its parts. Its two tentacles, "curling and twisting and thirty feet long," undulate both within the picture plane and outside it. After a barracuda’s foiled by squid ink, dramatic double gatefolds open, revealing that even a yardwide page can’t fully contain this creature. Sea depths are dark teal, purpled, or blackened; gorgeously crisp white text type casts its own light. Anatomical details elicit Fleming's most assertive descriptions. As tentacles enfold a fish, "they latch on with powerful / sucker-studded clubs. / ... / Suckers ringed with saw-like teeth / that rip into skin and hold on tight." There’s a startling close-up of "the beak. / Bone-hard and parrot-like." Poetic compression occasionally results in obfuscation. Accounting for the squid's huge eyes, Fleming elides bioluminescence (effectively, jellyfishes’ early-warning system of approaching predators), discernible by the squid only as “a shimmering outline.” The creature’s potential color changes are mentioned speculatively, without further qualification.
Visually marvelous, like its subject—with a text more poetic than expository. (labeled diagram of giant squid, author’s note, bibliography, web resources, suggested books) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59643-599-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
“It is a lovely thought,” opines Bear, “to think that we could ever be, / as kindly as we ought.” Impossible to disagree.
Vivacious illustrations carry this unlikely tale of a captured mouse’s ploy that inspires three predatory animals to wage peace.
When Cat nabs Mouse by the tail, the quick-thinking rodent immediately tells him it’s Friendly Day: “a day for sharing, a day for caring, / when everyone is nice, // when Frog reads Snail a fairy tale / and cats do NOT eat mice.” So eloquent is the mouse that the dazzled feline marches off to persuade Dog and a less credulous but tenderhearted Bear to join paws and set out to make the holiday a real one. Expanding the central cast into a burgeoning gallery of wild creatures from all over, Fuge illustrates Kelly’s bouncy rhymes with a series of harmonious gatherings. These range from the aforementioned frog and snail to a tiger lounging familiarly against a (knitting) rhino, a fox serenading dancing geese, baboons handing out balloons and a cow pouring medicine for a bedridden crocodile. All are expressively posed and rendered in sharp detail (with occasional anthropomorphic tweaks) and with fond smiles.
“It is a lovely thought,” opines Bear, “to think that we could ever be, / as kindly as we ought.” Impossible to disagree. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4380-0345-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Barron's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
A delight for budding naturalists of all stripes, flecks, dots and textures.
Worthy successor to Ruth Heller’s Chickens Aren’t The Only Ones (1981), this engrossing album pairs images of dozens of precisely detailed eggs and their diverse wild parents to basic facts presented in neatly hand-lettered lines.
Nearly all depicted actual size (and those that aren’t, are consistently so labeled), Long’s eggs look real enough to pick up, whether placed in natural settings or suspended on white pages. All, whether from birds, insects, reptiles, fish or amphibians, are not only identified, but Aston adds both topical phrases—“Eggs come in different sizes”—to each spread and, usually, memorably presented additional facts: “An ostrich egg can weigh as much as 8 pounds. It’s so big and so round, it takes two hands to hold one egg.”
A delight for budding naturalists of all stripes, flecks, dots and textures. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8118-4428-5
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
