A straightforward description of how some humans are working to help animals affected by the oils we all use.
Oiled birds get rescued and rehabilitated by an experienced team.
On the U.S. East Coast, a team from the Delaware-based Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research rescues birds and animals from oil spills of all kinds. Their process involves capture, treatment, including extensive scrubbing, and time for recovery before release. The book’s alliterative title misleads: This organization works with animals oiled in all kinds of places. In the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, in their biggest oil-spill job, pelicans were the most common birds they treated, described in the two opening spreads. Yee’s digitally colored drawings are realistic. Knowledgeable readers will recognize the painted turtle, great blue herons, mallards, Canada geese, bald eagle, and mergansers in the hands of wildlife rehabilitators, veterinarians, and support staff or paddling happily in recovery pools. Peeking out of cages in their rescue truck are others: a wood duck, a muskrat, a cormorant. The variety is impressive. The men and women working with these injured animals represent different ages and races. The relatively simple text is printed directly on the illustrations in a large font. The use of first-person plural emphasizes the teamwork involved. As with other books from this publisher, backmatter includes further information: suggestions for things readers can do, a picture-identification puzzle, and an interview with the organization’s executive director.
A straightforward description of how some humans are working to help animals affected by the oils we all use. (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60718-823-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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
A solid addition to the climate-change canon for those interested in saving a fragile world.
Dire consequences attend the unchecked melting of Arctic sea ice.
The more the ice melts, the more the Arctic climate changes. The more that air and ground temperatures rise, the more the frozen ecosystem’s inhabitants, including plants and insects, suffer from dwindling habitats; threats to food sources; and imbalances in feeding, breeding, and migration patterns. Solid information is packed into this brief work that lucidly raises the alarm for young readers, with each spread capturing the thrilling, chilling north in rich, dramatic blue swathes of seawater set off by icy glaciers and snowdrifts. Child-friendly, occasionally cluttered paintings, some with labels, highlight polar bears and their Arctic neighbors; a spread of vignettes illustrates how changes to plant life affect wildlife. One labeled spread explains all: As seawater warms, it absorbs sunlight, thus heating more water and melting more ice. One poignant spread depicts a bewildered polar bear mom, eyeing readers and flanked by her twin cubs, drifting on a shrinking ice floe. Two human children, one brown-skinned and one pale, occasionally appear in the illustrations as well. The book ends on a hopeful note, reassuring youngsters that “we still have time to save polar bears and slow the loss of Arctic ice.” A note in the backmatter offers conservation tips.
A solid addition to the climate-change canon for those interested in saving a fragile world. (author’s note, bibliography, additional sources) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-14319-8
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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