Not a necessary purchase—but an easy sell.
Photos of 11 unusual-looking animals are accompanied by statements about the utility of their odd features.
From thorn bugs in the Americas to saiga antelopes in Eurasia, this album introduces strikingly unusual-looking members of the animal kingdom from around the world. Singling out animals that “look freaky” is a dubious premise for children’s attention, but author Murphy points out that “these odd features also make them super survivors.” Spread by spread she presents close-up photographs that fill a page and a half; a single-sentence caption and a short boxed paragraph explaining the odd feature’s utility appear in the remaining space. The mammals—dugong, aye-aye, naked mole rat, narwhal, and the aforementioned antelope—may be animals children have heard of. Leafy sea dragons sometimes turn up in aquariums. But the others—the brightly colored thorn bug gracing the cover, a sea slug called a glaucus, an Australian reptile called a thorny devil, and the African shoebill (a large, grumpy-looking bird)—are likely to surprise. The photographs, from stock sources, are wonderfully attention-getting. There seems no need for the exclamation marks that end every descriptive sentence and most of the explanatory paragraphs. The information given is limited but sound, supported with additional facts and suggestions for further reading and web research in the backmatter.
Not a necessary purchase—but an easy sell. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5415-8502-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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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