A promising premise sloppily handled.
A guessing game for readers who are a little hazy on the differences between turtles and tortoises, dolphins and porpoises, and other often confused animal cousins.
“Croc or gator? Be a sleuth. / Guess who grins from tooth to tooth?” Not only are several of Jameson’s supposed clues—for telling hares from rabbits, for instance, or bees from wasps and hornets—just as obscure as that one, but some of the solutions on following spreads will leave young nature detectives as perplexed as they were before. Scobie’s cartoon crocodile actually leaves multiple teeth exposed when its jaws are closed, not just the “fourth” one the author specifies. Nor, the way the illustrator angles the two side-by-side reptiles, are the differences in their snouts (another distinction Jameson mentions) visible. The rest of the presentation is similarly phoned in; it seems unlikely that even very young children will ever confuse arbitrary pairings like puffins and penguins, the titular alpaca is shown not in full but only from chin up and really looks more like a sheep than a llama, and a teaser image of a toad leaping off a lily pad (“Frog or toad now hopping in?”) is just cheating given that toads don’t actually live in ponds. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A promising premise sloppily handled. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780762478781
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding...
Beginning readers who tunnel through this upbeat first introduction will “dig” them too.
After an opening look at several kinds of worm (including the candy sort), McCloskey drills down to the nitty-gritty on earthworms. He describes how they help soil with their digging and “poop” (“EEW!”) and presents full-body inside and outside views with labeled parts. He also answers in the worms’ collective voice such questions as “Why do you come out after the rain?” and “How big is the biggest worm in the world?” that are posed by a multiethnic cast of intent young investigators in the cartoon illustrations. A persistent but frustrated bluebird’s “Yum, yum!!” and rejected invitations to lunch offer indirect references to worms as food sources, and reproductive details are likewise limited to oblique notes that worms have big families “born from cocoons.” Single scenes mingle with short sequences of panels in pictures that are drawn on brown paper bags for an appropriately earthy look.
Norma Dixon’s Lowdown on Earthworms (2005) digs deeper into the subject, but this lays fertile groundwork for budding naturalists. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-935179-80-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap.
Budding naturalists who dug We Dig Worms! (2015) will, well, coo over this similarly enlightening accolade.
A curmudgeonly park visitor’s “They’re RATS with wings!” sparks spirited rejoinders from a racially diverse flock of children wearing full-body bird outfits, who swoop down to deliver a mess of pigeon facts. Along with being related to the dodo, “rock doves” fly faster than a car, mate for life, have been crossbred into all sorts of “fancies,” inspired Pablo Picasso to name his daughter “Paloma” in their honor, can be eaten (“Tastes like chicken”), and, like penguins and flamingos, create “pigeon milk” in their crops for their hatchlings. Painted on light blue art paper—“the kind,” writes McCloskey in his afterword, “used by Picasso”—expertly depicted pigeons of diverse breeds common and fancy strut their stuff, with views of the children and other wild creatures, plus occasional helpful labels, interspersed. In the chastened parkgoer’s eyes, as in those of the newly independent readers to whom this is aimed, the often maligned birds are “wonderful.” Cue a fresh set of costumed children on the final page, gearing up to set him straight on squirrels.
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap. (Graphic informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-935179-93-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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