An animated entry about a common backyard miracle.
A caterpillar’s journey from egg to butterfly…or maybe moth.
“A caterpillar,” McCloskey writes, alongside an inside peek at a specimen with important parts labeled, “is a tube with a stomach.” As impersonal (and true) as that may be, his endearing cartoon images of various kinds of caterpillars will give young readers good cause to join two budding investigators—one light-skinned, the other dark-skinned—and a cat in learning about eggs, instars (or stages), anatomy, cocoons, and chrysalises on the way to witnessing in sequential views a set of marvelous transformations. Nearly every figure in the cleanly drawn scenes, including the cat, offers simple facts and playful comments on the way: “And what do you think comes out…of the chrysalis or the cocoon?” “A big baboon?” “NO!” “A small raccoon?” “NO!” “A dish that ran away with the spoon?” “NO!” Along with pointing out physical differences between butterflies and moths, McCloskey goes on to depict examples of both posed next to their different-looking juvenile forms and closes with a quick summation of the monarch’s migratory life cycle.
An animated entry about a common backyard miracle. (Graphic nonfiction. 5-7)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781662665080
Page Count: 36
Publisher: TOON Books/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tempting fare for young dino-devotees.
A gallery of prehistoric marine reptiles, their prey, and their predators.
Aiming for newly independent readers, Thomson describes in short sentences and simple language how plesiosaurs—an order that included both long- and short-necked varieties—hunted, got about with their flippers (“Maybe it paddled like a duck. Maybe it glided like a sea turtle”), gave birth to live young, and succumbed at last to an extinction event 65 million years ago. She provides broader context with comments about general features common to land and marine reptiles alike and closes with summary facts about other marine reptiles of both the past and present. Details both tantalize (the “smooth stones” in a plesiosaur’s stomach “may have helped to crush food”) and enlighten through concrete example: “Some plesiosaurs were only a bit longer than a broomstick. Some could’ve stretched halfway across a basketball court.” Throughout, Thomson carefully makes sure to emphasize that there is much we still do not know. Plant juices up the presentation with dramatic (labeled) portraits of thrillingly toothy predators leaving trails of blood in the water as they eat and are eaten.
Tempting fare for young dino-devotees. (print, video, and web resource lists) (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58089-542-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much beyond the razzle-dazzle, but it’s got that in spades.
Intense hues light up a prehistoric parade.
It’s really all about the colors. The endpapers are twinned head-shot galleries captioned, in the front, with scientific names (“Tyrannosaurus rex”) and pronunciations and, in the rear, translations of same (“Tyrant Lizard King”). In between, Paul marches 18 labeled dinos—mostly one type per page or spread, all flat, white-eyed silhouettes posed (with occasional exceptions) facing the same way against inconspicuously stylized background. The text runs toward the trite: “Some dinosaurs were fast… / and other dinosaurs were slow.” But inspired by the fact that we know very little about how dinosaurs were decorated (according to a brief author’s note), Paul makes each page turn a visual flash. Going for saturated hues and vivid contrasts rather than complex patterns, he sets red-orange spikes like flames along the back of a mottled aquamarine Kentrosaurus, places a small purple-blue Compsognathus beneath a towering Supersaurus that glows like a blown ember, pairs a Giganotosaurus’ toothy head and crest in similarly lambent shades to a spotted green body, and outfits the rest of his cast in like finery. “Today you can see their bones at the museum,” he abruptly, inadequately, and simplistically concludes.
There’s not much beyond the razzle-dazzle, but it’s got that in spades. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6698-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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