Beautiful photos, with an impact heightened (sometimes to somewhat dizzying altitudes) by the accompanying words.
The Newbery medalist matches bursts of poetic commentary to dozens of dramatic close-ups, mostly of creatures classified as endangered or threatened.
Drawn from National Geographic’s Photo Ark project, which aims to portray examples of every creature in captivity, the photographs present vividly colored animals singly or in small groups, posed against plain white or black backgrounds. Some subjects are rendered with knife-sharp clarity and others with some softening of focus, but all are around the same relative size and display a presence as intense as their enhanced hues. Three gatefolds open up either to reveal a visual index or to expand the approximately three dozen large portraits in the main gallery with ranks of smaller, labeled images. Alexander invites viewers to compose haiku on the pictures; his own contributions are haikulike in language if not form: the three lines of “homes of courage / on humble backs / this is not a race” arc in turn over the shells of a row of ploughshare tortoises, for instance. They take lyrical flights even when their meaning is obscure, as for a pair of young pandas seen as “strong, yet gentle…black and white / championing human nature.” Animals “are counting on us to help them,” he writes, with more urgency than strict accuracy.
Beautiful photos, with an impact heightened (sometimes to somewhat dizzying altitudes) by the accompanying words. (author’s, photographer’s notes) (Informational picture book/poetry. 6-12)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2767-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic Kids
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Laugh-out-loud fun with a wonderful cast of characters. A winner in every way.
Tank is a 2,580-pound rhinoceros living in the city zoo.
Unfortunately, his domicile is just on the other side of the right-field fence at the park where 12-year-old Nick Spirakis and his friends play their own variation of baseball. When Nick misses a ball that his nemesis, Pete, drives into Tank’s territory, Nick jumps in, grabs the ball, and makes it out just in time to avoid Tank’s charge. Nick narrates the tale, set in 1948 in a Midwestern city patterned after Milwaukee, describing his friends and activities as if he is in direct conversation with readers. Every Saturday is spent working in his father’s shop, wishing he could be playing ball instead. His father, a Greek immigrant, prizes hard work and ambition and is determined that Nick will own the shop someday. Everything changes when the new owner of the city’s minor league baseball team shakes everything up. There are promotions to lure everyone into the ballpark. Nick and his pals join a batboy-for-a-day contest that takes place on Saturdays, causing him to invent some rather convoluted lies to explain his absences from the shop. Themes (rivalries, family dynamics, feminism) and historical details (radio announcers, frozen custard) combine with lots of mishaps and misadventures, including another very public encounter with Tank. The story assumes a white default.
Laugh-out-loud fun with a wonderful cast of characters. A winner in every way. (acknowledgments, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0626-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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