A vivid and authentic account of geese living their beautiful, wild lives.
A bonded pair of Canada geese raise a family.
When Goose and Gander fly back to the island they call home, it’s still wintry. They fend off rival geese and, as the ice thaws, dive for food. Amid frog song and under a full moon, the two come together, and “a miracle begins.” (Mating isn’t depicted on the page.) Next, Goose finds their old nest and lines it with moss and twigs, lays five eggs, and incubates them for a whole month—not feeding herself and not moving, even through a late snowstorm. Meanwhile Gander stands guard, driving off a hungry fox and a curious puppy. Five goslings hatch, looked after by both Goose and Gander and observed by a light-skinned child (referred to as “you”), until autumn arrives and all seven fly away together. The language is well chosen, and repetition gives extra weight to the words’ meaning. A spread of backmatter adds more fascinating facts about Canada geese. Using a restrained palette, Repka’s colorful illustrations are detailed and accurate, though stylized and elegantly composed, right down to the decorative endpapers. While the goslings are undeniably cute, the artwork eschews anthropomorphism. Perspective varies from full views to close-ups, with appropriate, identifiable landscapes and vegetation. The child is the only human and is portrayed less realistically than the animals. The many double-page spreads make for an immersive read-aloud.
A vivid and authentic account of geese living their beautiful, wild lives. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781534113183
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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