Just the ticket for budding naturalists with a serious interest in our planet’s remotest reaches.
The feline science explorer conducts a tour of the world’s oceans.
Though readers who have navigated Miranda Krestovnikoff’s Ocean: Exploring Our Blue Planet, illustrated by Jill Calder (2020), or any of the many like ventures will find the territory and content familiar, the professor’s enthusiasm (“KNOWLEDGE AWAITS!”) and Newman’s busy, blocky scenes of sea life and landforms lend extra vim to the adventure. There are bits of comedy and side commentary, but generally the members of the bright-eyed animal crew familiar from previous expeditions are all business, asking leading questions or pointing significantly to underscore the professor’s neat, legible blocks of observations and explanations. After first gathering on the beach for a look at tides, tide pools, and erosion, the explorers dive for close looks at diverse habitats from kelp forests to shipwrecks, with occasional pauses to study broad topics like food webs or plate tectonics. Following encounters with whales and sharks, fish, birds, and dozens of other marine denizens at every depth, the voyagers land on the Galápagos Islands, split up to visit the poles, regather for quick ganders at how oceans are being threatened and protected, then close out with a final spray of “Factoroids”: “More people have stepped on the surface of the Moon than have been to the Mariana Trench.”
Just the ticket for budding naturalists with a serious interest in our planet’s remotest reaches. (glossary, index) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-912497-89-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure.
It’s not truffles but doubloons that tickle this porcine wayfarer’s fancy.
Funke and Meyer make another foray into chapter-book fare after Emma and the Blue Genie (2014). Here, mariner Stout Sam and deckhand Pip eke out a comfortable existence on Butterfly Island ferrying cargo to and fro. Life is good, but it takes an unexpected turn when a barrel washes ashore containing a pig with a skull-and-crossbones pendant around her neck. It soon becomes clear that this little piggy, dubbed Julie, has the ability to sniff out treasure—lots of it—in the sea. The duo is pleased with her skills, but pride goeth before the hog. Stout Sam hands out some baubles to the local children, and his largess attracts the unwanted attention of Barracuda Bill and his nasty minions. Now they’ve pignapped Julie, and it’s up to the intrepid sailors to save the porker and their own bacon. The succinct word count meets the needs of kids looking for early adventure fare. The tale is slight, bouncy, and amusing, though Julie is never the piratical buccaneer the book’s cover seems to suggest. Meanwhile, Meyer’s cheery watercolors are as comfortable diagramming the different parts of a pirate vessel as they are rendering the dread pirate captain himself.
A nifty high-seas caper for chapter-book readers with a love of adventure and a yearning for treasure. (Adventure. 7-9)Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37544-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
A floral fantasia for casual browsers as well as budding botanists.
Spirited illustrations brighten a large-format introduction to flowers and their pollinators.
Showing a less Eurocentric outlook than in his Big Book of Birds (2019), Zommer employs agile brushwork and a fondness for graceful lines and bright colors to bring to life bustling bouquets from a range of habitats, from rainforest to desert. Often switching from horizontal to vertical orientations, the topical spreads progress from overviews of major floral families and broad looks at plant anatomy and reproduction to close-ups of select flora—roses and tulips to Venus flytraps and stinking flowers. The book then closes with a shoutout to the conservators and other workers at Kew Gardens (this is a British import) and quick suggestions for young balcony or windowsill gardeners. In most of the low-angled scenes, fancifully drawn avian or insect pollinators with human eyes hover around all the large, luscious blooms, as do one- or two-sentence comments that generally add cogent observations or insights: “All parts of the deadly nightshade plant contain poison. It has been used to poison famous emperors, kings and warriors throughout history.” (Confusingly for the audience, the accurate but limited assertion that bees “often visit blue or purple flowers” appears to be contradicted by an adjacent view of several zeroing in on a yellow toadflax.) Human figures, or, in one scene, hands, are depicted in a variety of sizes, shapes, and skin colors.
A floral fantasia for casual browsers as well as budding botanists. (glossary, index) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-500-65199-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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