A loving portrayal of a never-forgotten connection with the natural world.
Matt, his sister, Katie, and his best friend, Pablo, revive a pond in the woods and enjoy it throughout the seasons.
Gorgeous, softly colored illustrations add to the magic of this remembered experience. Done in acrylics, colored pencil, and opaque ink and accurate in their nature detail, they fill each double-page spread. Before and after scenes on the endpapers reveal the neighboring suburbs and city beyond, but, except for Matt’s first venture out of his yard before the title page, the artist concentrates on the pond: its discovery, cleaning and rebuilding, the weather, the bugs, the old rowboat, the birds, and the joys of being in and around the water. Katie collects feathers to make the necklace she wears throughout the summer, reads about the creatures they encounter, and shares what she’s learned. A grand, wordless spread looks down on the children enjoying their pond, inviting readers into this idyllic world. There's a campout to end the summer, skating in the winter, and a slim plot involving a heart-shaped piece of blue quartz. Matt and Katie are white, and Pablo has darker hair and skin; these are the Wisconsin children of the author-illustrator’s childhood. (Is it the adult artist painting the pond on the final page?)
A loving portrayal of a never-forgotten connection with the natural world. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4735-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
An excellent addition to classroom, library, or personal nature collections.
Who knew the food chain would make for such a jaunty rhyme?
“Far from the north, an island can be found. / Earth’s salty seas flow all around. / But who has the hungriest mouth / in the seas of the south?” There’s a great mass of plankton floating; something is coming to eat it…it could be a sea horse or a moon jelly. “No, no, no, it’s nothing like that. / It’s someone else in this habitat.” It’s pink Antarctic krill…but there’s a hungrier mouth heading toward the krill. It could be a petrel swooping down into the sea or a squid; nope, this time it’s a blue cod. Through each link in the food chain, two possibilities are offered before the answer is revealed. The animals get bigger and bigger until it’s an orca dining on a brown fur seal. British artist and teacher Walters’ debut is a fun-to-read rhyme that does an excellent job tracing one food chain from microscopic plankton to apex predator. The realistic animals in his cut-paper collages will remind adults of Steve Jenkins’ work, and young biologists will enjoy trying to identify each slightly larger mouth from just the lips (or beak) tantalizingly placed at the edge of every other recto. Backmatter completes the package, with further information, a matching activity, and a card game.
An excellent addition to classroom, library, or personal nature collections. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62855-631-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Simple enough for preschool and kindergarten listeners but an effective introduction to a worldwide problem.
Disappointed when the end-of-summer sand-castle competition is postponed due to beach conditions, Cora starts campaigns to clean the beach and to avoid creating more plastic trash.
The storyline of this thinly disguised lesson is straightforward. The aspiring castle-contest–contestant tries to clean up the beach, finds the task overwhelming, discovers that people are often too busy to pick up the accumulated trash but can help in other ways, learns about animals thinking trash is food, enlists some friends, and, with other contestants on the trash-free beach, gets to build her castle after all. What distinguishes the presentation are Rewse’s colorful illustrations. They suggest a seaside community with a diverse population, palm trees, plenty of sun and sand, and, unfortunately (and all too realistically), a beach strewn with familiar plastic trash. Cora and her mother have brown skin and long textured hair, and there’s a pleasing variety of skin tones, hair colors and styles, and generations among the simply depicted characters. The beach-cleaners all wear gloves or use trash-picking poles. The final spread shows the sand-castle competition, and though Cora’s construction looks like a grand place to live, readers can see that others are even more complex or imaginative. But that’s not the end. Cora’s new project is a trash-reducing campaign. An author’s note provides more information about plastic trash and ways to avoid creating it.
Simple enough for preschool and kindergarten listeners but an effective introduction to a worldwide problem. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8075-0801-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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