Flock away from this one.
A hodgepodge of bird facts.
While there is a throughline to this book—the annual migration of swallows from Europe to Africa—it may take young listeners most of the book before they realize it, as it’s a subtle aspect that is buried in an avalanche of seemingly miscellaneous facts about many different species of birds. From habitats and nesting habits to prey and how birds fly, the facts come hard and fast in small paragraphs of text scattered across the pages, though there isn’t much rhyme or reason to their order—wingspan is used several pages before it is defined—and some information is repeated, even on the same page. Rzezak’s stylized birds have expressive eyebrows that unfortunately often make them look angry. The stylization can also at times make species look too similar to one another, as on the page shared by the sociable weavers and the swallows, which differ in shape only in their tails. On a page with lots of birds on a power line, the one redheaded swallow readers are told to find on every spread is among a group labeled blackbirds instead of with its fellow swallows at the other end of the line, and its body type matches the blackbirds’. Various words are bolded in the text, species names among them, but there is no glossary, and the book lacks backmatter and a map as well, serious lacks in a nonfiction text for children.
Flock away from this one. (Nonfiction. 4-8)Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780500653241
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Visually stunning, and meta, sorta, but ultimately discordant.
Simler (Plume, 2017) presents a seemingly guileless visual inventory of nature’s minutiae, but a spider’s surreptitious, side-by-side activity conveys a more mysterious subtext in this French import.
“In nature there is much to see, if you look closely.” A stylized oceanside scene—trees and flowers in the foreground, boats sailing, gulls flying, a shark swimming—seems idyllic enough. “You may find… / …leaves, / catkins and seeds,” and so much more. Simler invites readers to pore over exquisitely rendered natural elements, including multiple spreads of insects. Each creature, flower, or thorny stem appears against white space on the left, labeled with its common name. Each right-hand page features a close-up of the spider—often glimpsed only in part—interacting with one or more of these objects or critters. She’s making off with a fern frond, an emerald-hued shield bug, an acorn cap, even some pebbles—but why? The puzzle’s solved as Simler reveals “a web, / and a skillful, watchful artist… / …weaving a delicate masterpiece.” Readers see each captured element suspended in the web, carefully arrayed to replicate the seascape introduced at the outset. A thorn’s the shark’s fin; nutshells stuck with feathers are sailboats. The allegorical denouement (the spider’s an “artist” rather than a predatory arachnid) feels manipulative, counteracting the relative verisimilitude with which Simler approaches her natural catalog.
Visually stunning, and meta, sorta, but ultimately discordant. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4413-2843-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Peter Pauper Press
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
There are several other successful picture books about collective nouns to be preferred over this one.
Collective nouns are the singular focus of this straightforward picture book.
A round-headed monkey asks a white man who has a positively insectile mustache and is dressed in a top hat and red coat, “I’m curious. What do you call a group of geese?” The man answers the question (a gaggle) and adds the names of groups of sheep (a flock) and cows (a herd). The monkey replies, “Wow! I wonder what you would call a group of giraffes?” And so the dialogue continues: the monkey asking, the man answering. These two characters are pictured against a white background on a side panel set off from each spread illustrating the group of animals in a way that alludes to their collective noun, with varying success—a memory of elephants, for example, is shown as an elephant within another elephant’s thought bubble within a third elephant’s thought bubble. There is no apparent reason why the monkey wants to know these nouns nor any apparent structure moving the story forward. Reading this book aloud is no fun, unless learning the collective nouns is of burning interest to readers, and there is no index that would make this book useful in a reference collection. The only reason to keep turning the pages is the lovely collage illustrations, featuring playful use of shapes and patterns in sophisticated color palettes.
There are several other successful picture books about collective nouns to be preferred over this one. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-264457-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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