A high-wattage spotlight on our most important power source.
A beaming ray of sunshine illuminates the role of visible light in energizing life on Earth.
Moon brings the same refreshing combination of charm and solid fact that animated her profiles of water (2021’s Drop) and air (2024’s Puff) to an even more fundamental subject. “I’m traveling light!” exclaims Ray, dashing through space with his fellow star-born rays. And, given that Ray is all energy, there’s nothing faster in the universe: “I am the speed limit!” Once through the Earth’s atmosphere, which filters out most of the gamma rays and other harmful parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, it’s time to light up the planet and provide it with colors, to turn on the heat, to “power the weather,” and, best of all, give plants and other forms of life the free energy required to grow. Fans of Drop and Puff will smile at cameos from the protagonists of those titles. In the vivid illustrations, bursts of light brighten deep seas and underground layers to demonstrate energy’s reach, storage, and continual flow, as well as the planetary surfaces, where light plays an essential role in making food for all. In final views, a diverse group of young campers peer into a fire and up at a starry sky. “Every moment you live, you turn light into you!” the book concludes. “Oh! The possibilities!”
A high-wattage spotlight on our most important power source. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9780593857984
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.
An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.
Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567784
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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