Unfocused but nevertheless gifted with bold visuals and a beguiling sense of appreciation for nature’s beauties.
Imported from Germany, an album of mountains, with tributes to those who scale them, portraits of flora and fauna that live on them, and related topics.
As Braun covers his subject in no very systematic way and often wanders some distance off course, it’s his faceted, vividly hued landscapes and figures that will (as in Wild Animals of the North and Wild Animals of the South, 2016 and 2017) be the main draw. In between soaring portraits of 20 tall or otherwise renowned peaks and rocky formations, he intersperses wildlife portraits—the snow leopard being particularly magnificent—along with equipment layouts for climbers and for skiers. He also ventures down into caves and across the Gobi Desert, pausing to admire several scenic wonders from Antarctic icebergs to mountain sculptures including Petra, Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse Memorial. To give a sense of scale he places the Eiffel Tower and Great Pyramid next to Uluru in one scene and, just for fun, in another slips in a pair of hulking yeti. The accompanying notes are likewise scattershot, offering nuggets of information that can feel arbitrary. Aside from stately Maasai and Aboriginal men in ceremonial dress and quick nods to renowned mountaineers Edmund Hilary, Tenzing Norgay, and Reinhold Messner, human figures are too stylized to detect their ethnicities.
Unfocused but nevertheless gifted with bold visuals and a beguiling sense of appreciation for nature’s beauties. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-11)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-912497-94-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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