Taylor’s story of a deer family’s unexpected appearance in an urban garden is hampered by its monotone delivery, but there is an easy imparting of information that ought to be in every child’s environmental-awareness kit. Early one morning, young Sonia discovers five deer tucking into the greens growing in her city garden. While the neighbors come to gape, Sonia’s dad and the building super decide to call the animal control officers to have the deer safely removed. Unfortunately, the animal control officer’s policy is to exterminate the deer. The neighbors decide to peacefully protest this policy by gathering around the deer to protect them, while in the meantime alerting a wildlife rescue group. Most of the neighbors spend the night alongside the deer; the next morning, Carl, from the rescue group, arrives to sedate and cart away the deer (much to the relief of the animal control officer) to a safe haven. Sprinkled throughout the tale are such concepts as habitat loss, seasonal food needs, overpopulation, and other staples of eco-consciousness. Delicate watercolors emphasize the adorable over the wild, while also heightening the incongruity of the situation. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: April 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-374-37988-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From Johnston (An Old Shell, 1999, etc.), poetic phrases that follow a ghostly barn owl through days and nights, suns and moons. Barn owls have been nesting and roosting, hunting and hatching in the barn and its surroundings for as long as the barn has housed spiders, as long as the wheat fields have housed mice, “a hundred years at least.” The repetition of alliterative words and the hushed hues of the watercolors evoke the soundless, timeless realm of the night owl through a series of spectral scenes. Short, staccato strings of verbs describe the age-old actions and cycles of barn owls, who forever “grow up/and sleep/and wake/and blink/and hunt for mice.” Honey-colored, diffused light glows in contrast to the star-filled night scenes of barn owls blinking awake. A glimpse into the hidden campestral world of the elusive barn owl. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-981-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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