An entertaining examination of oceanographic food webs, good for both everyday read-alouds and classroom instructional use.
An informational picture book that solves a whodunit of the sea in lilting, rhyming text.
Petrie (The Bumpy, Lumpy Horseshoe Crab, 2011) wrote and illustrated this picture book about the feeding habits of sea creatures. A young girl clad in a wet suit, flippers, and a scuba mask finds an intact clamshell, missing its clam, with an unexplained hole drilled in it. She asks a nearby adult what might have created the hole, and when he panics, convinced it must be the work of a dangerous creature (“A shark, it’s a shark, / whose tooth bit right through it. / I knew when I saw it, / a shark’s tooth could do it!”), all of the children are ordered out of the ocean. It’s up to the youthful zoological detective to discover the perpetrator so that the revelers can return to the water. Based on her own knowledge of sharks, the girl rejects the adult’s hypothesis, and she questions a sea star, a sea gull, a lobster, and a moon snail. She is accompanied in her inquiries by three comic fish that make elaborative asides. The interrogated animals are clam predators, but they declare their innocence: “Not me, not me, / I guarantee. / I love to eat clams, / but it wasn’t me!” Each explains his or her modus operandi, which doesn’t match the evidence; the sea gull, for example, says, “I drop the clam hard / to shatter its shell. / Then I swoop down to eat / from the rock where it fell.” Cartoonish illustrations fit the whimsical tone and mood, and bright colors help solidify the seaside setting. Shifts in perspective demonstrate the scale of the animals in relation to each other and the girl and remain mostly consistent. An afterword includes additional information about each of the ocean animals featured.
An entertaining examination of oceanographic food webs, good for both everyday read-alouds and classroom instructional use.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9705510-2-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Seatales Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
