Readers will cheer the return of these merry, lab-coated schlemiels.
The troupe of wacky, peripatetic invention collectors returns for a fourth adventure.
Having in previous episodes failed to comprehend machines, electricity, and sound (each explained with infinite patience by the children they encountered), four doofus scientists now crash their flying Museum of Inventionology outside an elementary school in order to investigate light. After storming the nearest classroom, they surprise a bespectacled kid, who patiently explains what a prism, magnifying glass, crayon, camera, and television are, respectively. As the child talks, the explanations scaffold upon one another. In one instance the discussion of how a prism bends light leads naturally into a talk about how a magnifying glass changes how that light does or does not come together. Each explanation is accompanied by supporting information, examples, diagrams, and historical notes with dates. Alas, by the end the Invention Hunters are no wiser than they were when they began, but young readers may have reaped the benefits. Silly art and jokes abound, perhaps to a lesser extent than in previous outings. Still, with adults as cheerfully clueless as these, it’s hard not to want to see them louse up more kinds of science in the future. The Invention Hunters are diverse; their patient guide in this title has pale skin and straight, black hair.
Readers will cheer the return of these merry, lab-coated schlemiels. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-46796-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A simple but effective look at a keystone species.
Sea otters are the key to healthy kelp forests on the Pacific coast of North America.
There have been several recent titles for older readers about the critical role sea otters play in the coastal Pacific ecosystem. This grand, green version presents it to even younger readers and listeners, using a two-level text and vivid illustrations. Biologist Buhrman-Deever opens as if she were telling a fairy tale: “On the Pacific coast of North America, where the ocean meets the shore, there are forests that have no trees.” The treelike forms are kelp, home to numerous creatures. Two spreads show this lush underwater jungle before its king, the sea otter, is introduced. A delicate balance allows this system to flourish, but there was a time that hunting upset this balance. The writer is careful to blame not the Indigenous peoples who had always hunted the area, but “new people.” In smaller print she explains that Russian explorations spurred the development of an international fur trade. Trueman paints the scene, concentrating on an otter family threatened by formidable harpoons from an abstractly rendered person in a small boat, with a sailing ship in the distance. “People do not always understand at first the changes they cause when they take too much.” Sea urchins take over; a page turn reveals a barren landscape. Happily, the story ends well when hunting stops and the otters return…and with them, the kelp forests.
A simple but effective look at a keystone species. (further information, select bibliography, additional resources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8934-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A common topic ably presented—with a participatory element adding an unusual and brilliant angle.
To the tune of a familiar ditty, budding paleontologists can march, dig, and sift with a crew of dinosaur hunters.
Modeling her narrative after “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush,” Lendroth (Old Manhattan Has Some Farms, 2014, etc.) invites readers to add appropriate actions and gestures as they follow four scientists—modeled by Kolar as doll-like figures of varied gender and racial presentation, with oversized heads to show off their broad smiles—on a dig. “This is the way we clean the bones, clean the bones, clean the bones. / This is the way we clean the bones on a warm and sunny morning.” The smiling paleontologists find, then carefully excavate, transport, and reassemble the fossil bones of a T. rex into a museum display. A fleshed-out view of the toothy specimen on a wordless spread brings the enterprise to a suitably dramatic climax, and unobtrusive notes in the lower corners capped by a closing overview add digestible quantities of dino-detail and context. As in Jessie Hartland’s How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum (2011), the combination of patterned text and bright cartoon pictures of scientists at accurately portrayed work offers just the ticket to spark or feed an early interest in matters prehistoric.
A common topic ably presented—with a participatory element adding an unusual and brilliant angle. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62354-104-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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