The best kind of infodump: both fun and redolent with anatomical insights.
An appreciative, up-close examination of a physical feature that has played a fundamental role in animal evolution.
Authored by a British museum devoted to the crab, this offbeat work invites readers to peer into the “bum TIME VORTEX” so that a pair of side-stepping arthropod guides in the cartoon illustrations can shed light on the history, ubiquity, and amazing variety of uses to which butts are and have been put through. Relatively speaking, “patooties are pretty recent inventions,” but as our narrators retrace this 560-million-year story up to today’s “Age of the Anus,” piles of fascinating nuggets emerge—including the arresting claim that in relation to body size, humans have the most “massive badonkadonk” of all. The book offers a clear and logical explanation for that statement. While chortling at animal ends from the multipurpose cloacae of dinosaurs to the “colorful keisters” of modern mandrills—not to mention the synonym-rich closing glossary—young audiences will easily absorb the message that our posteriors are actually essential players in nearly everything our bodies do for us. The rare human figures in the art are mostly brown-skinned.
The best kind of infodump: both fun and redolent with anatomical insights. (timeline) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780711297630
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
Markle invites children to picture themselves living in the homes of 11 wild animals.
As in previous entries in the series, McWilliam’s illustrations of a diverse cast of young people fancifully imitating wild creatures are paired with close-up photos of each animal in a like natural setting. The left side of one spread includes a photo of a black bear nestling in a cozy winter den, while the right side features an image of a human one cuddled up with a bear. On another spread, opposite a photo of honeybees tending to newly hatched offspring, a human “larva” lounges at ease in a honeycomb cell, game controller in hand, as insect attendants dish up goodies. A child with an eye patch reclines on an orb weaver spider’s web, while another wearing a head scarf constructs a castle in a subterranean chamber with help from mound-building termites. Markle adds simple remarks about each type of den, nest, or burrow and basic facts about its typical residents, then closes with a reassuring reminder to readers that they don’t have to live as animals do, because they will “always live where people live.” A select gallery of traditional homes, from igloo and yurt to mudhif, follows a final view of the young cast waving from a variety of differently styled windows.
Another playful imagination-stretcher. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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