Supported by helpful backmatter including a simple map, this will interest animal-fact lovers and primary classroom teachers...
Animal babies from around the world describe their families.
This information-packed title not only describes varied family structures and child-rearing practices, it gives the proper names of the children for each of 23 species and, for nine, the word for “mother” or “father” rendered in the language appropriate to the animal’s home. Appealing digital paintings show animals, usually a parent and offspring, in their usual habitat. Set directly on the image in thin but readable type is the animal child’s statement: “I’m in charge of all my meals” (white rhino calf); “My dad gives piggybacks” (poison dart frog tadpole); “I’m a super sister” (meerkat pup). The examples come from around the world; the parental behaviors represent the wide variety seen among humans. Often a spread will show contrasts: beavers live in one place, orangutans “move around a bunch”; sharks look just like their parents, ladybugs are markedly different as larvae and pupae. For same-sex or adoptive families, the author offers one-of-a-kind or unusual examples: the male chinstrap penguin pair from a New York zoo; a dog named Guddi who adopted a monkey; female albatross parenting pairs in Hawaii. She concludes with a spread of diverse human families of varying and sometimes contrasting colors, ethnicities, and composition.
Supported by helpful backmatter including a simple map, this will interest animal-fact lovers and primary classroom teachers alike. (glossary, map and key, author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5124-2532-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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
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