Budding meteorologists have no shortage of introductory books from which to choose, but the clean design may help this one...
An inviting photographic guide to the strange and surprising state of air all around us.
Bold photographs and color-coded chapters slice this info-packed primer into manageable portions. Each section of standard weather fare (hot, cold, wind, and rain) has a dedicated background tone, while brief mentions of weather folklore, scientific tools, and climate change complete the package. Questions to readers printed in text boxes lend themselves to further conversation, while brightly colored bubbles shout small facts and tidbits. De Seve neatly relates lessons to everyday life, as when she suggests readers imagine steam from a pot when talking about clouds. Intriguing extras include the Beaufort scale and the list of possible hurricane names for the years 2015 through 2020—which readers will quickly scour to see if their own names made the cut. Alas, the text doesn’t mention the practice of retiring names, so some astute kids may wonder why well-known past storms aren’t included. Games at the ends of chapters are meant to reinforce lessons learned, but most are just quick puzzles to add a bit of liveliness. The variety of skin tones of humans portrayed in the carefully chosen photographs is appreciated.
Budding meteorologists have no shortage of introductory books from which to choose, but the clean design may help this one stand out. (parent tips, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 6-8)Pub Date: July 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2719-3
Page Count: 132
Publisher: National Geographic Kids
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
BOOK REVIEW
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.
An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.
Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567784
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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