Informative and breathtakingly beautiful.
The giant sequoia tree is a natural wonder inspiring awe with its immensity and grandeur.
Cooke explores the sequoia’s life cycle from a tiny seed through its amazing growth and longevity to its eventual collapse, when it releases seeds for a new beginning. Fires clear undergrowth and allow the seeds to scatter. When no fires occur, insects perform the same functions. Sequoias can eventually fall victim to their own size, collapsing and decomposing. These facts are made accessible via concrete comparisons that engage young readers’ imaginations. The sequoia’s height is equal to “three blue whales stacked chin to tail,” and it is “as heavy as three hundred elephants.” As narrator, Cooke speaks with earnestness and clarity while employing language and syntax that are poetic and filled with obvious love of these giants. Hsieh’s double-page–spread illustrations, done in gorgeous tones of browns, yellows, and greens, add a dreamlike element. The sequoia itself is depicted with careful accuracy and, like the properties of its colorful bark, always seems to glow in sunlight, firelight, or moonlight. Wildlife has its place in the forest habitat, with deer, birds, squirrels, and more appearing in their natural activities. Several humans also appear—a diverse group of children, including one who uses a wheelchair, along with an older woman figure—all tiny at the base of the tree as they admire it in wonder.
Informative and breathtakingly beautiful. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-930238-85-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Yosemite Conservancy
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
More thoughtful, sometimes exhilarating encounters with nature.
In a new entry in the Over and Under series, a paddleboarder glimpses humpback whales leaping, floats over a populous kelp forest, and explores life on a beach and in a tide pool.
In this tale inspired by Messner’s experiences in Monterey Bay in California, a young tan-skinned narrator, along with their light-skinned mom and tan-skinned dad, observes in quiet, lyrical language sights and sounds above and below the sea’s serene surface. Switching perspectives and angles of view and often leaving the family’s red paddleboards just tiny dots bobbing on distant swells, Neal’s broad seascapes depict in precise detail bat stars and anchovies, kelp bass, and sea otters going about their business amid rocky formations and the swaying fronds of kelp…and, further out, graceful moon jellies and—thrillingly—massive whales in open waters beneath gliding pelicans and other shorebirds. After returning to the beach at day’s end to search for shells and to spot anemones and decorator crabs, the child ends with nighttime dreams of stars in the sky meeting stars in the sea. Appended nature notes on kelp and 21 other types of sealife fill in details about patterns and relationships in this rich ecosystem. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
More thoughtful, sometimes exhilarating encounters with nature. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-79720-347-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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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