The author and illustrator of Wolf Watch (1997) here team up again to let the tigress speak: “I am the tigress. / I walk alone. / No pack / no pride / no mate / helps me survive.” Winters’s tigress describes how she hunts to feed her cubs, washes them with her warm, wet tongue, carries them to safety to avoid a lurking leopard, and teaches them to swim, hide, and hunt, until at last they can go off to live on their own. The author presents a good deal of detail about the lifecycle, without ever giving specific information about the species of lion or geographic region where it is found. The title ends as it begins, as the tigress asserts: “I am the tigress. / I walk alone.” Regan’s huge black and gold tigress has strength and dignity, while the inquisitive cubs are cuddly and cute. Double-paged spreads allow for the sweep and majesty of the setting. But the illustrator is less successful at integrating the tiger into a realistic landscape. While the author describes the tigress hunting at the edge of the jungle at sunset “where peacocks roost,” the illustrator presents a decorative peacock with feathers trailing to the ground. In any setting but a zoo, that bird would be dinner! The author does not provide sources, so young researchers will need to look elsewhere for school assignments, which certainly could be inspired by this beginning. This is an attractive nature read-aloud for the picture-book set. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82323-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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