With good humor and a keen eye for detail, Dewey (Finding Your Way, not reviewed, etc.) records another close encounter with denizens of the natural world—here, a family of roadrunners. It all begins when the male, later dubbed “Hamlet,” dashes up a wall near the author’s New Mexico home, scouting a nesting site—“Its stance, like its appearance, was contradictory: steady and uncertain, a cross between a cocky magpie and a nervous chicken.” Soon, Hamlet’s mate “Edith” appears, and sometime after, a quartet of chicks, one of whom, Paisano (a Southwestern cognate for “roadrunner”), takes to following Dewey around, even into the house. To the author’s own graceful, evocative drawings Meinzer and three other photographers add crisp color shots of these ungainly, bedraggled-looking birds going about the business of scratching out a living with alert efficiency. Paisano eventually finds a mate and, like his parents before him, moves on, leaving both a writer and a host of readers to be beguiled by these unique birds. (index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7613-1250-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Millbrook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
Varieties, life cycle, pack and hunting behavior, and the current status of this endangered predator—although with what may seem too many transparently rhetorical questions (``Are wolves savage and destructive hunters of people and livestock?'') and fillers (``After wolves kill a large animal, they may rest for a brief time or eat right away''). Without attribution, Simon states that ``...there is no record of a healthy wolf ever trying to kill a human in North America.'' In Gray Wolf, Red Wolf (1990, for slightly older readers), Patent is more precise: ``there is no record of a healthy wild wolf attacking a human.'' Patent also does a better job of stating the case for and against reintroducing wolves in national parks. Still, though his text isn't up to his usual high standard, Simon again selects outstanding photos—this book's strongest and most appealing feature. (Nonfiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-022531-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
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