Terrifyingly informative.
A rogue’s gallery of venomous spiders.
Claiming that her six profiles are “for fang fans only,” Spicer Rice in fact also offers broad views of the roles spiders play in food chains and ecosystems in general. She presents a sort of arachnid reality show that gives readers opportunities to pick the deadliest candidate and to come away appreciating the eight-legged horrors for their place in nature. “We have them! We need them! Let’s love them!” she proposes in her frothy narrative. She notes that widow spiders come in white, red, and blue as well as black (and recluses come in shades other than brown), observes that Australian funnel-web spiders like to hide out in enclosed spaces such as shoes, and, with particular relish, details the painful, if seldom fatal, symptoms of being bitten by each of the contestants. Along with cartoon depictions of sick or terrified human victims of diverse hue, Temescu tucks in lots of close-up views of spiders, both anthropomorphic and anatomically correct, from spinnerets to “Fangs! Fangs!” All six are melodramatically posed along a “Death-O-Meter” at the end, next to a revelation that while almost no one dies from spider bites today, air pollution takes a far more lethal toll globally; even video games are deadlier.
Terrifyingly informative. (drawing lesson) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781324053712
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
Markle invites children to picture themselves living in the homes of 11 wild animals.
As in previous entries in the series, McWilliam’s illustrations of a diverse cast of young people fancifully imitating wild creatures are paired with close-up photos of each animal in a like natural setting. The left side of one spread includes a photo of a black bear nestling in a cozy winter den, while the right side features an image of a human one cuddled up with a bear. On another spread, opposite a photo of honeybees tending to newly hatched offspring, a human “larva” lounges at ease in a honeycomb cell, game controller in hand, as insect attendants dish up goodies. A child with an eye patch reclines on an orb weaver spider’s web, while another wearing a head scarf constructs a castle in a subterranean chamber with help from mound-building termites. Markle adds simple remarks about each type of den, nest, or burrow and basic facts about its typical residents, then closes with a reassuring reminder to readers that they don’t have to live as animals do, because they will “always live where people live.” A select gallery of traditional homes, from igloo and yurt to mudhif, follows a final view of the young cast waving from a variety of differently styled windows.
Another playful imagination-stretcher. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
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