Limited as a source of information but packing a big visual wow factor.
Viewed through colored filters, apparent jumbles are transformed into 10 natural habitats and select gatherings of native animals.
For each of the locales—a redwood forest, the Ganges River basin, Loch Lomond, the Apo Reef in the Philippines, and more—a large wordless spread is sandwiched between a colored introductory opening with brief descriptive notes and a monochrome visual key with information about 18 wild residents. The illustrations that cover the colored spreads are made up of flora and fauna drawn with precise naturalism using one of three distinct palettes—predominately red, or green, or blue—and superimposed. To the naked eye the scenes look like garish tangles of vague shapes, but peeking through the three tinted windows in a viewer drawn from a front pocket separates the layers: into nine-member galleries of diurnal and nocturnal (or crepuscular) animals for red and blue respectively; and expanses of thick foliage or coral with green. As the author neither identifies nor describes any of the flora on view, the focus is less on natural history than on the visual trick—but the transformations seem almost magical, and young viewers will be slow to tire of switching the pictures back and forth.
Limited as a source of information but packing a big visual wow factor. (Informational picture book. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84780-887-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
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