A highly engaging overview that will have readers eager to learn more.
A dynamic introduction to 17 of the world’s most adorable creatures.
Keating and DeGrand’s follow-up to Pink Is for Blobfish (2015) and What Makes a Monster? (2017) highlights still more unusual animals. Each double-page spread is dedicated to one particular animal and has four consistent features. On the verso is a large, stock photograph underneath the phrase “Cute as an [ANIMAL].” On the recto is a paragraph with a brief overview of what makes the animal notable; a sidebar with a rundown of the animal’s Latin name, size, diet, habitat, and predators and threats; and a brightly colored pull-out paragraph highlighting a particularly intriguing fact and paired with a cartoonlike illustration from DeGrand. Animals included range from the mandatory (pygmy hippopotamus, fennec fox) to the surprising (pom-pom crab, blue dragon sea slug). Close-up photographs provide excellent detail but don’t provide a realistic scale, especially for the smaller animals, and thus the animals that are cute in part due to their size lose some of their cuteness. A concluding spread explores “the science of cute,” and potentially unfamiliar vocabulary words are highlighted throughout in bold, leading to a glossary in the back. Keating’s chipper voice always shines through (“With its perma-smile and fuzzy face, the QUOKKA is fast becoming one of the world’s best-known cutie-pies”).
A highly engaging overview that will have readers eager to learn more. (Informational picture book. 7-11)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6447-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An excellent choice for nature-loving elementary readers.
Footprints show the impact of human actions on Earth in this eco-friendly nonfiction picture book.
Swanson’s simple text, accompanied by clear, detailed photography, highlights the many different sizes and shapes of footprints. A photo of an elephant’s large prints shows a child leaping from one to the next alongside a photograph of the animals walking. Small footprints of insects and other animals are shown before the work showcases a diverse array of human footwear. Footprints “capture adventures at the greatest heights,” the book notes, showing paths on mountains and on the moon. The text moves on to metaphorical footprints, suggesting that young activists follow in the steps of historical changemakers, then briefly addresses digital and carbon footprints, further explained in notes at the back. Swanson’s accessible text is tailored to emergent readers, with few pages featuring more than one sentence; most passages stretch over multiple pages. The metaphorical footprints are likely to require adult discussion about what it means to leave behind traces of one’s actions. The selection of uncredited photos is excellent, with images from history and nature that are well suited to each idea; Rosa Parks and Greta Thunberg are among the changemakers featured. The text doesn’t name many of them, though, which will leave readers who don’t recognize them at a loss.
An excellent choice for nature-loving elementary readers.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4788-7603-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Reycraft Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A frank, often funny appreciation of our space program’s high-water mark.
Brown launches the Big Ideas That Changed the World series with a graphic commemoration of the program that put boots on the moon.
Brown assumes the narrative voice of Rodman Law, a wisecracking professional daredevil who attempted to ride a rocket in 1913 (“Yeah, this oughta work”) and beat the odds by surviving the explosion. He opens with a capsule history of rocketry from ancient China to the Mercury and Gemini programs before recapping the Apollo missions. Keeping the tone light and offering nods as he goes to historical figures including Johann Schmidlap (“rhymes with ‘Fmidlap’ ”), “cranky loner” Robert Goddard, and mathematician Katherine Johnson, he focuses on technological advances that made space travel possible and on the awesome, sustained effort that brought President John F. Kennedy’s “Big Idea” to fruition, ending the narrative with our last visit to the moon. Aside from the numerous huge, raw explosions that punctuate his easy-to-follow sequential panels, the author uses restrained colors and loose, fluid modeling to give his mildly cartoonish depictions of figures and (then) cutting-edge technology an engagingly informal air. He doesn’t gloss over Laika’s sad fate or the ugly fact that Wernher von Braun built rockets for the Nazis with “concentration-camp prisoners.” Occasional interjections and a closing author’s note also signal Brown’s awareness that for this story, at least, his cast had to be almost exclusively white and male.
A frank, often funny appreciation of our space program’s high-water mark. (index, endnotes, resource lists) (Graphic nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3404-5
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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