A clear, appealing blend of science and sibling strategizing.
The dream of flight knows no boundary.
When young Curie the squirrel encounters baby robins in faltering flight, she wants to learn to fly herself. For her first, failed, experiment she creates makeshift wings out of found feathers. A good scientist, Curie then observes children from a nearby school playing on a trampoline and decides to take flight by bouncing on a mushroom; she uses sticks to record how high she leaps but concludes that jumping is not flying. She and her big brother, Newton, hypothesize together, realizing that they need lift from air as well as energy. Seeing the kids fly a paper airplane spurs the pair to try further experiments as they—and readers alongside them—learn about air pressure, lift, and airflow. After constructing a glider, they build a gravity-defying catapult to launch it and then a better, slingshotlike, launching catapult. Subsequent experiments allow the scientifically minded squirrels to learn and improve their results. The STEM concepts are effectively elucidated in the narrative and further expanded on in the backmatter. The anthropomorphized squirrels wear clothes and have hands to replace paws but are recognizably rodents. As in their first foray into physics, Newton and Curie (2020), they are slightly softer cousins of the characters in Kirk’s Library Mouse (2007). Science could hardly have cuter advocates. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A clear, appealing blend of science and sibling strategizing. (glossary, websites) (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781419749636
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A charming friendship story and great setup for future books.
Curious about the Big Wide World outside his Sasquatch community, Hugo makes a friend who is of it.
Sasquatch Hugo’s bedroom is inside a cave and possesses the charming feature of a small stream running through it that he can sail his little toy boat on. It’s cool, but he yearns to see the Big Wide World. When he asks his smart friend Gigi if a Sasquatch might become a sailor, she says it’s possible but would be difficult—the primary rule of their people is to not be seen by Humans. Then, in everyone’s favorite Hide and Go Sneak class, which is held outside, a Human appears; Hugo laughs at the sight, drawing Human attention in a taboo-breaking mistake. Shortly after, Hugo’s toy boat floats into the cave with a Human toy—soon, it’s facilitating a pen-pal–type relationship that’s derailed when Hugo confesses to being a Sasquatch and Human Boone, a budding cryptozoologist, doesn’t believe him. How Hugo and Boone resolve this misapprehension and become friends in a joint search for the Ogopogo concludes this series opener. Potter keeps the third-person narrative tightly focused on Hugo’s perspective, and the details she uses to flesh out the Sasquatch world are delightfully playful. Sala’s drawings depict a homey Sasquatch cavern community, Boone as a freckled, white boy, and Hugo as a hairily benevolent behemoth.
A charming friendship story and great setup for future books. (final art unseen) (Fantasy. 5-9)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2859-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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