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
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd.
This British import is an imaginatively constructed sequence of images that show a white boy examining a city pavement, clearly in London, and the sights he would see if he were able to travel down to the Earth’s core and then back again to the surface.
The geologic layers are depicted in 10 vertical spreads that require a 90-degree turn to be read and include endpapers, which open out, concertina fashion, to show the interior of the Earth to its core. Beneath the urban setting are drains, pipes, and artifacts of urban infrastructure. Below that, archaeological relics are revealed. An Underground train speeds by, and below it, a stalactite-encrusted cave yawns. Deep below the Earth’s crust, magma, the Earth’s mantle, and the inner core are shown. Turn the page to start going up again, back through the mantle to the crust, where precious minerals are revealed, then fossils, tree roots, and animal burrows, ending with the same boy in the English countryside. The painted, stenciled, and collaged illustrations are full-bleed, and the tones graduate pleasantly from light colors at the surface of the Earth to rich pinks, yellows, and oranges as readers near the Earth’s core. The text is informative, if lacking in poetry, including such nuggets as “earthworms are expert recyclers, eating dead plants in the soil.”
An unusual offering for the young geology nerd. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68297-136-9
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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