A solid if not stellar addition to a growing picture-book genre.
In this true story, the African elephant Maggie languishes in an Alaskan zoo until she is transported to the Performing Animal Welfare Society’s facility in California.
The first sentence says, “Once, elephants lived in Alaska—two of them.” The text quickly makes it clear that, despite the book’s title, elephants are not indigenous to Alaska, and the two elephants lived in a zoo. Maggie was a baby when she was transported there to be a companion to an older, Asian elephant named Annabelle. According to the text, the cold climate did not hurt the animals, but Annabelle’s death left Maggie bereft. She took to carrying around a tire as her friend. The paragraph devoted to Maggie’s activities with the tire is entertaining until its concluding sentence, which describes how zookeepers daily find “lonely Maggie and her tire, waiting.” Readers learn of the many efforts made by zookeepers to help the pining pachyderm, with the eventual solution being a complicated move to PAWS, where “Maggie is never alone” and evidently “happy.” The text is clear and concise, intersplicing general facts about elephants, behavioral conditioning, and PAWS with Maggie’s story. Further information is offered at the tale’s end, including a Q-and-A with Maggie’s keeper at PAWS that appropriately complicates the elephant’s “happiness.” The art is accurate but not particularly compelling, with a stiff, retro quality. Registered-trademark symbols in the large-print text are an unwelcome intrusion—do readers really need to know what kinds of candy Maggie ate?
A solid if not stellar addition to a growing picture-book genre. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60718-450-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
A refreshing dive past some of our world’s marine wonders.
Denizens of the deep crowd oversized pages in this populous gallery of ocean life.
The finny and tentacled sea creatures drifting or arrowing through Zommer’s teeming watercolor seascapes are generally recognizable, and they are livened rather than distorted by the artist’s tendency to place human eyes on the same side of many faces, Picasso-like. Headers such as “Ink-teresting” or “In for the krill” likewise add a playful tone to the pithy comments on anatomical features or behavioral quirks that accompany the figures (which include, though rarely, a white human diver). The topical spreads begin with an overview of ocean families (“Some are hairy, some have scales, some have fins and some are boneless and brainless!”), go on to introduce select animals in no particular order from sea horses and dragonets to penguins and pufferfish, then close with cautionary remarks on chemical pollution and floating plastic. The author invites readers as they go to find both answers to such questions as “Why does a crab run sideways?” and also a small sardine hidden in some, but not all, of the pictures. For the latter he provides a visual key at the end, followed by a basic glossary.
A refreshing dive past some of our world’s marine wonders. (index) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-500-65119-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
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
BOOK REVIEW
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