Field guide, fact book, and diary of a mushroom-hunter gather under one umbrella. A first-person narrative, peppered with anecdotes of mushroom-collecting trips in the wild, brings to light the strange and surprising fungi that grow in backyards, snowbanks, and water, even in cars and carpets. A mushroom fanatic since her childhood in Moscow, Arnold (Baba Yaga, 1993) includes the standards—basic types, folk names, and scientific labels, identification tips and charts, pests, and habitats, including the mushroom's unusual partnership with trees. While Arnold enthusiastically promotes mushroom hunting, she and Swope caution readers repeatedly about the dangers of poisonous varieties. The history and origin of mushrooms, as well as religious and therapeutic aspects, are touched on in miscellaneous captions. Kids will relish the blunt descriptions—the red juice tooth is likened to ``a piece of cheese with drops of blood''; the Latin name for puffball means ``wolf fart.'' Other mushroom oddities are also sure to engross. Alternating illustrative styles shift between humorous depictions of a puffball-stomping child or a truffle-hunting wild-eyed pig and the more delicate, sedate renderings of velvety mushroom varieties. From the animal-shaped fungi to the spore-printed endpapers, Arnold's lifelong passion for her subject will make mushroom fanciers out of even the mycologically reluctant. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-4136-2
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
An earnest but energetic tribute to diversity, done up with postmodern arrays of smiling, stylized, lozenge-headed children paired to a rollicking celebration of: “Your coffee and cream skin, / your warm cocoa dream skin . . . / Your chocolate chip, double dip sundae supreme skin! / Your marshmallow treat skin, / your spun sugar sweet skin . . . / your cherry topped, candy dropped, frosting complete skin.” Tyler also urges readers to think about the commonality of “The skin that you laugh in; / the skin that you cry in; / the skin that you look to / the sky and ask, ‘Why?’ in.” Though he changes his tone and plies a verbal mallet to drive his point home in the last several verses, the earlier wordplay more than compensates—while glimpses of one child in a wheelchair, and another held by a biracial couple, expand the general theme to encompass more than skin color alone. A sonically playful, if just a bit overlong, alternative to Sheila Hamanaka’s All the Colors of the Earth (1994). (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-9759580-0-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chicago Children’s Museum/IPG
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere.
This book is buzzing with trivia.
Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about bees. The information is scattered—much like the scout bees—and as a result, both the nominal plot and informational content are tissue-thin. There are some interesting facts throughout the book, but many pieces of trivia are too, well trivial, to prove useful. For example, as the bees travel, readers learn that “onion flowers are round and fluffy” and “fennel is a plant that is used in cooking.” Other facts are oversimplified and as a result are not accurate. For example, monofloral honey is defined as “made by bees who visit just one kind of flower” with no acknowledgment of the fact that bees may range widely, and swarm activity is described as a springtime event, when it can also occur in summer and early fall. The information in the book, such as species identification and measurement units, is directed toward British readers. The flat, thin-lined artwork does little to enhance the story, but an “I spy” game challenging readers to find a specific bee throughout is amusing.
Friends of these pollinators will be best served elsewhere. (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-500-65265-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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