The ocean is certainly more than this abbreviated glance at its flora and fauna implies. Though Wu goes nose-to-nose with a shark and a sea otter, most of his marine photos are typical views of reefs and shallows—only occasionally reproduced with the clarity and brilliance of color he normally achieves. Kranking’s accompanying verses are likewise uneven in quality; characterizing the ocean as a playground, an art museum, a galaxy, a forest, and so forth, she expands on each metaphor with a rhymed observation: “Corals bloom beneath the waves, / Just like a garden grows. / But if you try to sniff these blooms, / There’s water up your nose!” She also varies the number of beats in her lines unpredictably, tries to rhyme “tour” with “more,” and turns the dramatic closing photo of a breaching humpback whale waving a flipper extremely hokey with, “The time has come to say so long.” Many other titles, including Wu’s own Fish Faces (1993) capture the undersea world’s dazzling swirl of forms and colors—and for the broad view, Seymour Simon’s Ocean (1990) is still hard to beat. (Picture book/poetry. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-8050-7097-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
Sloat collaborates with Huffman, a Yu’pik storyteller, to infuse a traditional “origins” tale with the joy of creating. Hearing the old women of her village grumble that they have only tasteless crowberries for the fall feast’s akutaq—described as “Eskimo ice cream,” though the recipe at the end includes mixing in shredded fish and lard—young Anana carefully fashions three dolls, then sings and dances them to life. Away they bound, to cover the hills with cranberries, blueberries, and salmonberries. Sloat dresses her smiling figures in mixes of furs and brightly patterned garb, and sends them tumbling exuberantly through grassy tundra scenes as wildlife large and small gathers to look on. Despite obtrusively inserted pronunciations for Yu’pik words in the text, young readers will be captivated by the action, and by Anana’s infectious delight. (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-88240-575-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
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