Worth a trumpet.
How might readers look, act, and live if they were wild African elephants?
“If you were an elephant, you’d be the biggest animal who lives on the land.” Thus begins the patterned text, with the titular phrase introducing a series of facts every few pages; all are told with a pleasant cadence and occasional rhymes or near rhymes. From the start, the text is engaging and full of whimsical imagery: After the opening text compares elephants’ ears to tent flaps and their thick hides to blankets, it says: “You’d turn the next page with your trunk, not your hand.” Readers learn about other animals of the savanna, herd behaviors, diet, mud baths, and more—along with a plethora of varied verbs and adjectives. The layout and artwork complement the text perfectly. The stylized art uses a broad but soft spectrum of colors and includes geometric patterns in the elephants’ habitat. The elephants themselves are rendered simply in solid colors and sport winsome faces and stances. A particularly clever illustration shows a baby elephant learning from its mother how to stamp warnings on the ground. The large, gray, tusked mother and her pastel, tuskless child are backgrounded by the page’s stark white; they stand high atop a crazy-quilt representation of sound waves. Good as a read-aloud and for emergent readers, it concludes in a way that leads equally gracefully to the author’s notes or bedtime. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Worth a trumpet. (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4134-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A $16.99 Mother’s Day card for cat lovers.
The team of Costain and Lovšin (Daddies are Awesome, 2016) gives moms their due.
Rhyming verses tell of all the ways moms are amazing: “Mommies are magic. / They kiss away troubles… // …find gold in the sunlight / and rainbows in bubbles.” Moms are joyful—the best playmates. They are also fearless and will protect and soothe if you are scared. Clever moms know just what to do when you’re sad, sporty moms run and leap and climb, while tender moms cuddle. “My mommy’s so special. / I tell her each day… // … just how much I love her / in every way!” Whereas dads were illustrated with playful pups and grown-up dogs in the previous book, moms are shown as cats with their kittens in myriad colors, sizes, and breeds. Lovšin’s cats look as though they are smiling at each other in their fun, though several spreads are distractingly cut in half by the gutter. However delightful the presentation—the verse rolls fairly smoothly, and the cats are pretty cute—the overall effect is akin to a cream puff’s: very sweet and insubstantial.
A $16.99 Mother’s Day card for cat lovers. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62779-651-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
So rocket science can be fun.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
If they haven’t already thought about their futures (and they probably haven’t), toddlers and preschoolers might start planning after perusing this cheerful first guide to scientific careers. Plump-cheeked, wide-eyed tykes with various skin and hair colors introduce different professions, including zoologist, meteorologist, aerospace engineer, and environmental scientist, depicted with cues to tip readers off to what the jobs entail. The simple text presents the sometimes-long, tongue-twisting career names while helpfully defining them in comprehensible terms. For example, an environmental scientist “helps take care of our world,” and a zoologist is defined as someone who “studies how animals behave.” Scientists in general are identified as those who “study, learn, and solve problems.” Such basic language not only benefits youngsters, but also offers adults sharing the book easy vocabulary with which to expand on conversations with kids about the professions. The title’s ebullient appearance is helped along by the typography: The jobs’ names are set in all caps, printed in color and in a larger font than the surrounding text, and emphasized with exclamation points. Additionally, the buoyant watercolors feature clues to what scientists in these fields work with, such as celestial bodies for astronomers. The youngest listeners won’t necessarily get all of this, but the book works as a rudimentary introduction to STEM topics and a shoutout to scientific endeavors.
So rocket science can be fun. (Informational picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62354-149-1
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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