A fun way to introduce food science and bread making to young readers.
Iris spends the day with her aunt Mary, who teaches her how to make whole-wheat sourdough bread from starter.
Iris, a bespectacled girl who keeps an unusual number of pets, waves goodbye to her parents as they leave her with Aunt Mary, also bespectacled, who comes bearing packages. Aunt Mary introduces Iris to her starter, which she calls Flora, and tells her about the microbes in it that eat flour and water and release bubbles that make bread rise. Together, they mix and knead the dough, let it rest, fold it, and shape it. While they wait for the loaf to rest, they walk to the park, where Aunt Mary tells Iris that she became a plant scientist because of her interest in growing food. Finally, they get home and, after a close call (the dog is extremely interested in the rising loaf), they bake the bread and eat it with Iris’ parents. Sensory details of sounds, smells, and tastes throughout the story intrigue readers, and the facts about bread are organically introduced even if the characters are not especially memorable. Spare illustrations in hues of yellow, green, and blue highlight Iris’ excitement and curiosity about her world. Readers will delight in learning with her. Iris is brown with an exuberant cloud of hair; her father is black, and her mother and Aunt Mary are white.
A fun way to introduce food science and bread making to young readers. (facts, recipe, note, further resources) (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9984366-0-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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