A rollicking reminder to reserve judgment before traveling in another’s orbit.
What’s the difference between a planet and an exoplanet? Depends on your point of view.
Lacera kits Mercury out with a winged helmet, Neptune with a pool toy, and the other major planets (plus Pluto, for, the author admits, sentimental reasons) with like regalia, plus faces, adding jocular notes to this planetary parable on proper perspective. The action begins when the planets spot a new one orbiting another sun and send it a welcoming letter. Alas, hardly has this developed into a regular correspondence than a sharp difference of opinion arises—both sides insisting that no, they’re not the exoplanets, or, as Mars puts it: “Exoplanet SCHMECKSOPLANET! We’re planets!” A passing comet breaks the stalemate by pointing out that Earth looks like a big planet to Mercury but a small one to Jupiter and that Mars is hot compared to Uranus but cold next to Venus, causing the planets to realize that “It all depends on how you look at things.” One apologetic letter later, interstellar amity is restored. Underwood doesn’t make the underlying point about the value of tolerating differences here on Earth explicit, but even younger audiences should get the memo…when they are not giggling at the sight of the planets playing poker while they wait or Jupiter’s many smiling moons—or, more soberly, taking in the prodigious amount of space trash floating about. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A rollicking reminder to reserve judgment before traveling in another’s orbit. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5743-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not particularly convincing as a reclamation project but generally informative and easy on the eyes.
A Smithsonian mammal specialist makes a bid to clean up the rat’s rotten rep.
Answering the titular question with “Maybe. Maybe not,” Lunde shifts readers’ focus away from rats in urban environments to wild species—from the bamboo-eating long-tailed marmoset rat of Southeast Asia to the Philippines’ bushy-tailed cloud rat. He also notes the important roles rats play in spreading seeds, feeding snakes and other predators, and (without getting too, or actually at all, specific) medical research. Gustavson joins the rescue operation with close-ups of rats rendered in naturalistic detail but looking more inquisitive than feral, sporting large pink ears and whiskery snouts. Some of the city settings are picturesquely grimy, but there are no dead creatures or images more disturbing than, in one scene, a white lab rat and a researcher in surgical garb locking eyes. On the contrary, another illustration even features a rat leaning in from the edge of the page to peer up at viewers, and a closing portrait gallery of selected rat species is equally fetching.
Not particularly convincing as a reclamation project but generally informative and easy on the eyes. (online resources) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-58089-566-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Bufo buffoonery for fans of the Holms’ Squish series and like early graphics.
Stopping a highway project that threatens his pond is going to take more than Cecil the toad’s ability to “toot.”
Cecil discovers the danger thanks to a short flight in the talons of a predatory but, fortunately, olfactorily sensitive hawk. Once safely back in the water, he calls together several pondside buddies including Jeremy the earthworm and Jeff, a “free-range hamster,” to brainstorm solutions to the crisis. Alas, it turns out to be not so easy for small creatures to stop giant bulldozers. Nothing if not nervy, Cecil even enlists the hawk to help by dropping rocks. No dice—“Catch you later,” the raptor sneers meaningfully as it flies off. Braddock’s experience illustrating A Charlie Brown Valentine (2002) and other post-Schulz Peanuts productions stands her in good stead here, as she presents in big cartoon panels a cast of neatly drawn creatures whose pithy commentary (the insectivorous Cecil, on his friendship with Reggie the fly: “Ours is a complex relationship”) is more sophisticated than their pratfalls and other broad antics. Just as all seems lost, two human biologists recognize another buddy, RayRay, as a rare “Jollyville Plateau salamander,” and the pond is saved. A pair of miniepisodes and assorted worm and Bufo americanus facts cap this wry eco-fable. Colored illustrations not seen.
Bufo buffoonery for fans of the Holms’ Squish series and like early graphics. (Graphic fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4494-5711-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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