A welcome acknowledgment of unsung figures.
How 11 deaf men helped to put the first men on the moon.
In 1958, the United States and the Soviet Union vied to be first to send a human into space. When students at Gallaudet College for the deaf read about the launch of U.S. satellite Explorer I, “rocket fever swirled.” Their dreams of becoming astronauts were stymied, however; astronauts needed “ears that worked.” But Navy doctor Ashton Graybiel realized that Gallaudet’s students could help address astronauts’ motion sickness. “The best way to help people who get motion sickness is to study people who don’t,” and some deaf people were immune because their inner ears didn’t work. For over 10 years, 11 recruits, nicknamed the Gallaudet Eleven, underwent numerous tests, including experiencing zero gravity on a plane dubbed the Vomit Comet and sailing in a violent storm. These bioastronauts’ work helped develop motion sickness treatments and astronaut gear. Though the Gallaudet Eleven never went to space, “their dreams rode sky-high when American astronauts landed on the moon in 1969.” Upbeat, accessible text, interspersed with quotes from Gallaudet Eleven members, underscores how—as participant Barron Gulak describes—these men made “a big leap for the disabled world” as well as space travel. Gehrmann’s illustrations are clear and expressive; a spread provides participants’ headshots and career details. Most figures present white.
A welcome acknowledgment of unsung figures. (note from Barron Gulak, author’s note, photograph, additional facts) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780316570596
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
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
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