Similar profiles abound, but this is a particularly engaging one.
A portrait of the big flappers as parents and “ecosystem engineers.”
Ihwagi, a zoologist who works for an elephant conservation organization, opens with a gallery of necessary gear for elephant observers—including an elephant GPS collar (“Elephant GPS collars are HUGE. You will need a vehicle to transport them”)—and then goes on to survey his subjects’ physical features, matriarchal social organization, behaviors, moods (including useful cues to when an elephant is “unhappy” and thus to be well avoided), threats from poachers and other hazards, and migratory habits. He closes with a look at the many ways elephants affect their habitats, from thinning forests by knocking down trees to creating water holes in dry seasons to providing plenty of poop to spread seeds and fertilize seedlings. Books on elephants are plentiful, but Ihwagi’s commentary is insightful, spread in digestible blocks through Jones’ painterly illustrations, which are crowded with stately pachyderms eating, drinking, fleeing hastily from bees (local farmers have found fences strung with beehives to be an effective deterrent), nuzzling calves, and posed in sociable groups. A view of silhouetted poachers pointing rifles in one scene is the only break from the cheery overall tone. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Similar profiles abound, but this is a particularly engaging one. (glossary, index) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68449-252-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neon Squid/Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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
A winning heads up for younger readers just becoming aware of the wider natural world.
An appeal to share concern for 12 familiar but threatened, endangered, or critically endangered animal species.
The subjects of Marino’s intimate, close-up portraits—fairly naturalistically rendered, though most are also smiling, glancing up at viewers through human eyes, and posed at rest with a cute youngling on lap or flank—steal the show. Still, Clinton’s accompanying tally of facts about each one’s habitat and daily routines, to which the title serves as an ongoing refrain, adds refreshingly unsentimental notes: “A single giraffe kick can kill a lion!”; “[S]hivers of whale sharks can sense a drop of blood if it’s in the water nearby, though they eat mainly plankton.” Along with tucking in collective nouns for each animal (some not likely to be found in major, or any, dictionaries: an “embarrassment” of giant pandas?), the author systematically cites geographical range, endangered status, and assumed reasons for that status, such as pollution, poaching, or environmental change. She also explains the specific meaning of “endangered” and some of its causes before closing with a set of doable activities (all uncontroversial aside from the suggestion to support and visit zoos) and a list of international animal days to celebrate.
A winning heads up for younger readers just becoming aware of the wider natural world. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51432-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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