by Jean Craighead George ; illustrated by Wendell Minor ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2013
A heartwarming culmination to a distinguished career.
George, who chronicled the return to America’s wild places of wolves and buffalo in two similar titles, now celebrates the comeback of the American bald eagle with a combination of fact and imagination.
Her slight story stars an unnamed boy and eagles known as Uncle Sam and First Lady and is set years ago, when eagles were disappearing, their eggs cracking because of DDT in the food chain. The boy helps the eagles, their own eggs broken, raise an eaglet from a transplanted egg by throwing fish he catches to the parents. Not only does the boy watch the pair brood the egg and nurture the hatchling he calls Alaska, he sees it take flight. Later, as an adult watching 30 eagles over the Hudson River, he can tell his son that he contributed to the eagles’ return. Though presented as true, the incident is undocumented and the threat to eagles in the contiguous 48 states statistically oversimplified. (The vast majority of the half-million eagles here when the Puritans came lived in Alaska, where they were never threatened.) Nonetheless, readers will be cheered by this inspiring picture book, illustrated with Minor’s dramatic gouache-and-watercolor paintings, which portray close-up eagle portraits, vignettes and vast landscapes.
A heartwarming culmination to a distinguished career. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3771-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
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by Jean Craighead George with Luke George & Twig George ; illustrated by Wendell Minor
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by Craig Smith ; illustrated by Katz Cowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010
Hee haw.
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The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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by Craig Smith ; illustrated by Katz Cowley
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by Doug MacLeod ; illustrated by Craig Smith
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by Adam Osterweil and illustrated by Craig Smith
by Sandra Markle & illustrated by Howard McWilliam ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2013
Irresistible.
What if an animal’s teeth grew into the space where you lost your two front teeth?
Markle chews on this interesting question in this compelling combination of imagination and fact. Spread by double-page spread, she introduces animals with unusual choppers, from the beaver’s iron-coated orange incisors to the camel’s worn-out stubs, and explains what they’re used for. Or, in the case of the narwhal’s single tusk, points out that scientists don’t yet know. On the left-hand side of each spread, photographs of the animals emphasize their teeth. On the right, a human child is portrayed with that animal’s teeth. These film-animation–style illustrations reinforce the fantasy aspect and feature a diverse range of children. A black-haired boy in flip-flops lifts a car with his elephant tusks. A girl in a wheelchair picks up soup noodles with her flexible, naked-mole-rat front teeth. The text is presented in small chunks—a paragraph of description and a toothy fact on one page facing a paragraph about what you could do with such teeth. The reading will be a challenge for the intended audience, but the subject so compelling they won't be able to resist. A backpack-wearing boy with dark-framed glasses and dripping fangs greets a rattlesnake on the cover.
Irresistible. (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-48438-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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by Sandra Markle ; illustrated by Vanessa Morales
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