PLB 0-688-15269-4 George offers alert naturalists a chance to go sleuthing around the world, and the results are invigorationg. Miss Lewis, a teacher, is off circumnavigating Earth; she corresponds with the students back home, telling of her travels and the creatures she encounters in Peru, Antarctica, Kenya, China, Japan, Australia, Alaska, and an island off the coast of California. She describes the wildlife, mentions particular sites she visits, often throws in an anthropological nugget or two, and then ends with a question that relates to some unusual trace that has been left by an animal—gouges taken out of cliff faces, a tree stripped bare, mysterious snowballs around a hot spring, a trail cut through the stony tundra. The animal is subsequently identified, although readers will not know until the end of the book, where the traces are explained, exactly what has transpired. George doesn’t try to cram every page with information, but is selective, choosing material that distills the unique character of a place. Excellent, highly detailed illustrations accompany the text. (maps) (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-15268-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Big Brown Bear, with a natty bowler hat, is all set to paint the house in this cheerful Level 1 reader. Every page presents a full-color scene and a few words of easily predicted, often rhyming text: “Bear is big. Bear is brown. Bear goes up. He comes down.” Big Bear climbs a ladder with a pail of blue paint, while nearby, Little Bear plays with a ball and bat—“Oh no! Little Bear! Do not do that!” These are simple words, but sometimes challenging ones, e.g., there are two uses of up, as in climbing the ladder and washing up. The pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations provide nearly ideal context, while also amplifying the story. The format is attractive and practical, featuring large type on a white background that is placed for easy reading. Beginning readers will be amused by the gentle humor in the book, and feel accomplished to have tackled it themselves. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201999-5
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Green Light/Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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