To say the book is simply a nature alphabet is an understatement. Altogether, the 26 selections create a panoramic...
“There is a wild and beautiful place where an ancient rainforest meets the ocean.…Come and explore the Pacific west coast” via the ABCs.
The promise of the above introduction is more than fulfilled. Two or three sentences narrate each letter: “B is for bears that den in the rainforest. At low tide, a hungry black bear ambles down to the beach and flips over rocks to find tasty crabs to eat.” Each statement is descriptive, informative, and handsomely illustrated with watercolors and colored pencils in expansive double-page spreads. Only a few letter choices will be familiar to most kids, such as E for eagles, F for fish, P for Pacific Ocean, and R for rain. For the most part, Hodge handles the more challenging letters well: I is for invertebrates, K is for kelp, Q is for quillback rockfish, and Z is for the intertidal zone. Only two entries are so obscure as to be real stretches: X is for Xiphister (a prickleback fish), and V is for “Velella velella, or by-the-wind sailors.” An author’s note provides further general information, and there is a short list of websites and books for further exploration.
To say the book is simply a nature alphabet is an understatement. Altogether, the 26 selections create a panoramic experience in print—East Coast dwellers will want one of their own. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55498-440-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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