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MY FIRST ATLAS OF THE 50 STATES

Name: MY FIRST ATLAS OF THE 50 STATES
Author: Georgia Beth
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4289-0

by Georgia Beth ; illustrated by Sara Lynn Cramb ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2019

A dismal flight, crashing and burning almost before it leaves the runway.

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A west-to-east flyover of the 50 states, noting select cities, flora, fauna, natural wonders, and tourist destinations.

It is, at best, a banal overview. Beth’s commentary ranges from statements like “[Alabama] is shaped like a rectangle and includes many different types of land” (Tennessee likewise “has many different areas”) to a clumsily phrased—not to mention outrageously coded—observation that Massachusetts “is a modern state with a diverse population in Boston and rural towns in the western half of the state.” She also incorrectly claims that New York was once “New Netherlands” and—perhaps to avoid even using the word “climate”—defines “biome” as “a mixture of the weather, plants, and animals found in a place.” Along with a handful of cities and occasional rivers, Cramb scatters light assortments of small animals, items, or natural features over flat, monochromatic full-page or double-page–spread portraits of each state. Many of these are repetitive (the same moose poses in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, for instance) or generic, and some, such as a bowl of cereal labeled “GM crops” in Minnesota and a harp representing “harp music” in Mississippi (“Home to the famous Mississippi River”), will add nothing to any reader’s understanding of anything. Younger armchair tourists and prospective road-trippers will find more reliably rewarding itineraries aplenty, led by Dan Yaccarino’s Go, Go America (2008) and Mark Teague’s LaRue Across America (2011).

A dismal flight, crashing and burning almost before it leaves the runway. (index) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-7112-4289-0

Page Count: 64

Publisher: QEB Publishing

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

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by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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THE WONDERFUL WISDOM OF ANTS

by Philip Bunting ; illustrated by Philip Bunting ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024

Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.

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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)