Adults with the resources and climate to use this book can glean ideas for engaging children.
When mulch and compost replace digging, gardening becomes easier for kids and better for the soil.
This ambitious, attractively presented book encourages children to become not only gardeners, but also nature observers, scientists, and data collectors. Comprehensible and enthusiastically but very briefly presented information is sometimes inadequate. We aren’t told exactly how to build compost enclosures from old pallets, how deep compost in a garden bed needs to be, how to tell when compost is mature, or how far apart to space zucchini and tomato plants (the same spacing is used for all the vegetables in the demo bed). The book is U.K.–centric, and some advice needs checking: Frost dates will vary, and composting bones is discouraged by the Environmental Protection Agency and might attract rats. Little help for the urbanite can be found. Purchased compost and mulch can be costly. Still, there is a lot of cheering-on and an upbeat, can-do tone throughout. The book advocates for school gardening, market gardening, and gardening as a family and offers suggestions for encouraging children with ADHD or who are autistic to garden. A sensory garden, “easy flowers,” and ways to attract wildlife are described. Abundant color photos brighten every page, and the layout is chock-full but clear. Individuals in the photos are mostly White-presenting; those in the illustrations are diverse.
Adults with the resources and climate to use this book can glean ideas for engaging children. (websites, index) (Nonfiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781783129195
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Welbeck Children's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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