Stellar artwork mismatched with weak rhyming verse.
The A Day In… series expands with these snapshots of animal life throughout an entire day in a forested wetland.
Neidigh’s incredibly detailed, realistic illustrations, all double-page spreads, are the real draw here, giving kids up-close views of the animals: the delicate wings of a darner as it captures a mosquito, each leg sporting tiny hairs; a fish’s individual scales; the brown bat’s fearsome-looking teeth. Many of the animals are hunting and/or catching prey; the bobcat carries a rabbit to her kittens. Unfortunately, Kurtz’s text is not a good complement. The rhyme and rhythm frequently seem forced and off. “It’s sunrise in the wetland. / A woodpecker flies from a tree. / She just brought her children breakfast. / They never stop feeling hungry.” A caddisfly’s (nonbifurcated) case is referred to as “armored pants” to rhyme with “plants,” and peepers’ song is compared to the sound of jingle bells. Not all the vocabulary introduced in the text is defined in context (“snag,” “larval,” “mandible”), but other opportunities are bypassed (it explains echolocation without ever using the word); there is no glossary. Backmatter introduces the concept of a keystone species (here a beaver), compares and contrasts the four types of wetlands, and asks readers to identify animals in an illustration from their descriptions. Answers are right-side-up at page bottoms. A Spanish-language edition publishes simultaneously in paperback.
Stellar artwork mismatched with weak rhyming verse. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62855-912-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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