Wonderfully silly fun—but flawed.
A seahorse responds to the narrator’s school report on “an interesting animal.”
Young Cassandra’s report is hand-printed primary-grade–style in various angles on wide-lined paper and illustrated with pen, marker, and crayon. Even from the cover readers will recognize that the seahorse is highly offended. In his typed responses, pictured in thought balloons, readers see that he thinks of himself as “quite majestic,” nothing at all like a horse, an opossum with a prehensile tail, or a long-nosed anteater. There are more animal comparisons: Seahorses perform dances with their mates like blue-footed boobies, camouflage like octopuses, and growl like dogs. Finally readers get to what makes seahorses really different: “The DADDIES GIVE BIRTH!” The humor in this spread is especially appealing—the proud daddy’s pouch is depicted as a strapped-on tummy pack, and all his fry have names readers or their classmates might share. Finally, the writer explains why she likes seahorses. They’re “WEIRD,” and “BEING WEIRD IS COOL.” She concludes with a reminder of all the other animals mentioned and a last page of further facts. Following the author’s This Is a Sea Cow (2019), this is similarly engaging, but there’s a serious misstep: a glue-sniffing (or drinking?) duck-billed platypus illustrating “weird.” Better choices might be Jennifer Keats Curtis’ Seahorses, illustrated by Chad Wallace (2012), or Eric Carle’s Mister Seahorse (2004).
Wonderfully silly fun—but flawed. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7860-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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