The sense of wonder that infuses each simply worded chapter is contagious, and some of the photos are soooo cuuuuute.
The author of an adult book about uncommon animal attachments invites emergent readers to share the warm (Unlikely Friendships, 2011).
This is the first of four spinoffs, all rewritten and enhanced with fetching color photographs of the subject. It pairs a very young rhesus monkey with a dove, one cat with a zoo bear and another that became a “seeing-eye cat” for a blind dog (!), an old performing elephant with a stray dog and a lion in the Kenyan wild with a baby oryx. Refreshingly, the author, a science writer, refrains from offering facile analyses of the relationships’ causes or homiletic commentary. Instead, she explains how each companionship began, what is surprising about it and also how some ended, from natural causes or otherwise. There is a regrettable number of exclamation points, but they are in keeping with the overall enthusiastic tone.
The sense of wonder that infuses each simply worded chapter is contagious, and some of the photos are soooo cuuuuute. (animal and word lists) (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7611-7011-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
A peppy introduction to a lesser-known type of worker dog.
An exploration of the work of avalanche-rescue dogs through a focus on one dog and her trainer.
Piper is a 3-year-old border collie who is training with her owner, Sara, to become an avalanche-rescue dog in Washington. Rusch outlines Piper’s daily training at a ski resort, introduces readers to her canine classmates, and concludes with Piper’s big test to become a rescue dog. Present-tense narration paired with dynamic color photographs puts readers in the moment with Piper: “Suddenly, she stops and her head snaps back. Did she smell something? She sniffs a bit but continues across the slope toward a cluster of trees.” Casual, colloquial language makes the narrative friendly and information accessible: “When Piper, Darwin, and other team members get pooped, they head into a hut to warm up and relax.” Bold display type and clear headers and borders create distinctive sections and provide space for eyes to rest. Inset information fills in relevant details about avalanches, dog biology, and dog training. Backmatter includes instructions for making a tug toy and training a dog to tug, and Rusch includes both a list of further reading and a list of internet resources—including how to find more information specifically about Piper and her co-workers.
A peppy introduction to a lesser-known type of worker dog. (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63217-173-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little Bigfoot/Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Not exactly seamless but all in all a substantial introduction to a significant North American fossil.
The story of Charlotte, Vermont’s official state marine fossil.
Rounds labors to draw a poetic message from the 11,500-year-old bones of a beluga that were unearthed in 1849 some 150 miles from the sea (“ ‘I was alive like you,’ they say. / ‘Time goes by fast,’ they say. / ‘The Earth is both strong and fragile’ ”) That’s a stretch, but her reconstruction of the whale’s likely history and her much-lengthier appended notes—on belugas, on who discovered the fossil, on what its discovery implied about the area’s prehistory, on glaciation in the Champlain Valley, and on Ice Age mammals of the region both extant and extinct—offer more than enough for readers to absorb and ponder. Carver supplies full-bleed landscapes stocked with woolly mammoths and musk oxen; views of “Charlotte” swimming with her pod, trapped in a tide pool, and then decomposing in stages; 19th-century workers (their faces indistinct but some, at least, possibly people of color) excavating a rail bed; a white naturalist (Zadock Thompson, unnamed in the main narrative) laying the bones out on a floor for study; and finally the assembled fossil in its modern exhibit case.
Not exactly seamless but all in all a substantial introduction to a significant North American fossil. (map, glossary, resource list) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-88448-485-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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