Brightened by sunny, simply drawn cartoons featuring people of several ages and skin shades, this introduction to the reproductive organs is designed as much to allay parental anxiety as to provide answers to younger children’s questions. Saltz, a practicing psychiatrist, describes the male and female set-ups in a light, relaxed tone, suggesting that it’s better to use specific terms rather than euphemisms for visible organs, and tracking physical changes from infancy to adulthood. She steers clear of topics deemed beyond her child audience’s understanding, such as sexual intercourse, or stages of fetal development, and backs up vague allusions to masturbation and privacy boundaries with a closing note in much smaller type. Though urethras are repeatedly mentioned but never illustrated, there are no lists of further information sources, and a description of sperm as looking “sort of like tadpoles” may leave some misapprehensions about their size, this makes an adequate discussion starter for parents with children not yet up to the level of detail in Robie H. Harris’s It’s So Amazing! (1999). (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-525-47389-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
A utilitarian, if not quite seamless, introduction to several natural history subjects, it will do till something more...
A set of comparisons presents new and pre-readers with elementary pointers on both the poles and differences between animals.
Photos of polar bears and of penguins on alternating spreads or pages with a few accompanying lines of simply phrased observations highlight differences between the two creatures—“Polar bears are covered in fur. / Penguins are covered in feathers”—as well as their respective Arctic and Antarctic habitats. A wordier section offering supplementary material that is also available on the publisher’s website follows, featuring additional facts about seasons and animal behavior, a true/false quiz (with answers provided) and a matching game. Though the aforementioned quiz rather unfairly covers material not previously presented, and one “photo” is actually a collage with northern lights clumsily Photoshopped in behind a polar bear, the overall approach will at least lay some groundwork for later geographical and animal study.
A utilitarian, if not quite seamless, introduction to several natural history subjects, it will do till something more artful comes along. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62855-209-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Puns and foolery pitched just right for newly independent readers.
Zemke provides more farmyard huggermugger (George Shannon’s Wise Acres, 2004) to illustrate Degman’s versified tale of animals trying to substitute at sunrise for an absent rooster.
Deciding that he needs a week at the beach to catch up on his sleep, Rooster enlists fellow livestock to crow each morning to wake Farmer McPeeper while he’s gone. But despite the best efforts of Sheep (“Her cock-a-doodle baaaaaaaa / didn’t travel too faaa. / In fact, she made barely a peep”), Cow (“udder disaster!”) and the rest, McPeeper sleeps on. Looking properly popeyed and panicky in the cartoon scenes, the other animals welcome Rooster back at last—only to learn that he’s caught a cold and can barely wheeze. As in her prizewinning light verse for 1 Zany Zoo (illustrated by Colin Jack, 2010), the author displays a gift for rhymes and language that is clever rather than forced. She also skips the obvious (trite) solution of a general hullabaloo and just has Rooster leave a whispered “cock-a-doodle-doo” on McPeeper’s bedside phone—a technology assist that displays pleasing ingenuity. Farmer McPeeper wakes up, feeling like he’s slept for a week…which he has.
Puns and foolery pitched just right for newly independent readers. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-939547-07-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Creston
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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