Not an essential but still an appealing addition to an animal shelf.
Animals and people share behaviors.
“Do you like to dance? // Honeybees do, too!” On a series of paired double-page spreads, Kaner invites young readers and listeners to connect to the animal world through a series of similar activities: dancing, playing tag or leapfrog, blowing bubbles, gardening, riding piggy-back, and being babysat. Each animal activity is described in a paragraph of exposition including both the how and the why. Examples come from around the world and include honeybees, gazelles, cattle egrets, gray tree frogs, leafcutter ants, marmosets, and flamingos. Two pages of simple backmatter add additional facts, including the continents on which the animals can be found. Faucher’s watercolor illustrations show smiling animals in appropriate habitats (though not always to scale with their environments) and cheerful people with varying hair and skin colors. Many show family activities: children with caregivers picking apples in an orchard; working and picnicking in what might be a neighborhood garden; a man bathing a small boy; a woman serving cookies to playing children. A pregnant woman suns herself on a beach while children play around her. There are further interesting details in each illustration, enough to keep young readers looking. Each of the human pictures also includes a smiling cat or dog.
Not an essential but still an appealing addition to an animal shelf. (Informational picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77138-569-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A hymn to the intrinsic loveliness of the wild and the possibility of sharing it.
What happens when a robot washes up alone on an island?
“Everything was just right on the island.” Brown beautifully re-creates the first days of Roz, the protagonist of his Wild Robot novels, as she adapts to living in the natural world. A storm-tossed ship, seen in the opening just before the title page, and a packing crate are the only other human-made objects to appear in this close-up look at the robot and her new home. Roz emerges from the crate, and her first thought as she sets off up a grassy hill—”This must be where I belong”—is sweetly glorious, a note of recognition rather than conquest. Roz learns to move, hide, and communicate like the creatures she meets. When she discovers an orphaned egg—and the gosling Brightbill, who eventually hatches—her decision to be his mother seems a natural extension of her adaptation. Once he flies south for the winter, her quiet wait across seasons for his return is a poignant portrayal of separation and change. Brown’s clean, precise lines and deep, light-filled colors offer a sense of what Roz might be seeing, suggesting a place that is alive yet deeply serene and radiant. Though the book stands alone, it adds an immensely appealing dimension to Roz’s world. Round thumbnails offer charming peeks into the island world, depicting Roz’s animal neighbors and Brightbill’s maturation.
A hymn to the intrinsic loveliness of the wild and the possibility of sharing it. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780316669467
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
The runaway cookie in this Mexican bakery is a soft, brown, stubby-tailed piglet as impertinently bold and smug in his continual escape as his Gingerbread Boy cousin. “Chase me! Chase me down the street. But this is one piggy you won’t get to eat! / ¡Córrele, córrele! ¡Y Córrele más! ¡Soy el cochinito que jamás comerás!” This bouncy dual refrain extends the familiar cumulative text, rendered in both English and Spanish, as piggy manages to elude Marta the baker, Lorenzo the mechanic, Mamá Nita the beautician, Joaquín the telephone repairman and a host of other neighborhood adults—until he is outsmarted by Rosa, a little girl on her way to school, who foxily “helps him” cross the street. Safely tucked into her backpack, piggy is both a welcome surprise and an excuse for Rosa’s lateness to class. Deep opaque acrylic paintings of a colorful barrio and its residents in pursuit add the right amount of cultural flavor to this vivid Latino retelling. Recipe appended. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55885-586-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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