A captivating story.
A true, heart-tugging tale about an injured baby elephant.
Animal rescuer Nick Marx first encountered Chhouk (Khmer for “lotus”) wandering in a forest in Cambodia in 2007. A wire snare had cut off one of the tiny animal’s front feet. The elephant was brought to Nick’s rescue center, where the humans faced two daunting problems: Would Chhouk ever walk normally? And what about the orphan’s loneliness? The second dilemma was easily solved: Lucky, an older female elephant, accepted Chhouk as her own. But Chhouk’s foot hurt when he tried to walk with her. Clearly, something needed to be done. Nick called doctors and makers of animal prostheses in Thailand and Cambodia to no avail. Finally, the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics, established to serve human victims of armed conflict, agreed to try. After several attempts, Chhouk was successfully fitted with a new, durable, comfortable shoe. Today, a teenage Chhouk requires and receives a new shoe every six months. This sweet, simply told story will capture animal lovers’ hearts and sympathy. The endearing, cartoonish illustrations depict a sweet-faced, often smiling Chhouk; his injured foot is presented without gore. Nick presents white; the rescue and medical team members have brown skin. Marx himself contributes a foreword; the backmatter includes elephant facts, photos of Chhouk, and an author’s note.
A captivating story. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-26687-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A fun, educational science book that thoughtfully portrays kids of color engaging with and learning from nature and each...
In her latest science-focused picture book, Rockwell offers perspectives from two kids with opposing opinions about insects.
A Black girl with long braids and glasses announces her love of insects while a boy of Asian descent, who drops his sandwich running from two houseflies, says he hates them. Throughout this picture book, which teems with color and motion, the girl focuses on the positives, like their beauty, role as pollinators, and benefits to the soil, as the boy highlights the negatives, like their penchant for stinging, the ugliness of insects like fleas, and the damage some such as aphids do to plants. Readers can decide for themselves whether the two protagonists find some points of agreement. The final double-page spread illustrates all of the insects that appear in the book and invites readers to revisit earlier pages to find them, including butterflies, beetles, bees, a mosquito, a cricket, and more. This informational early reader employs a controlled vocabulary that intentionally repeats words and phrases to facilitate independent reading. Many recognizable insects appear in the book, like the field cricket and the bumblebee, but Rockwell also includes some, such as the little wood satyr butterfly and the cucumber beetle, that will pique curiosity and encourage budding entomologists to explore further to learn about bugs they’ve never met.
A fun, educational science book that thoughtfully portrays kids of color engaging with and learning from nature and each other. (Informational early reader. 4-7)Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4759-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Just the ticket to spark or nurture early interest in the wonders of the natural world.
“Extreme” gets a broad definition (ticks?), but the first-rate photographs and easy-to-read commentary in this survey of animals adapted to harsh habitats will win over budding naturalists.
Sixteen creatures ranging from hot-springs bacteria and the tiny but nearly invulnerable water bear to sperm whales parade past, sandwiched between an introductory spread and a full gallery of thumbnails that works as a content review. The animals are presented in an ordered way that expedites comparisons and contrasts of body features or environments. The sharply reproduced individual stock photos were all taken in the wild and include a mix of close-up portraits, slightly longer shots that show surroundings and more distant eyewitness views. The Roops present concrete facts in simple language—“Penguins have feathers and thick fat to keep them warm”—and vary the structures of their two- to four-sentence passages so that there is never a trace of monotony. Like its co-published and equally inviting title, Melissa Stewart’s World’s Fastest Animals, this otherwise polished series entry closes with a marginally relevant small-type profile of a herpetologist at the American Museum of Natural History.
Just the ticket to spark or nurture early interest in the wonders of the natural world. (Informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4549-0631-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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