Expansive and effervescent.
A gastroenterologist from Down Under traces food’s “amazing journey” from pizza to poo.
Kitting out her anthropomorphic depiction of the digestive system with brown limbs, dark shades, and a startling “KBAM!” sound effect emanating from the anus, Feiner uses flights of fancy, not to mention loud colors and the odd glimpse of a koala or kangaroo, to inject Bannister’s broad and buoyant tour with even more energy. Younger readers are in for a solid info dump; the author covers the functions of relevant fluids such as saliva, explains peristalsis and what different parts of the intestines do, and what causes tummy rumbles, burps, and farts. Unlike most similar introductions to digestion’s basics, this one goes well beyond simple anatomy to discuss nutrition, allergic reactions (described as an immune system “glitch”), and even how that neurological “superhighway” known as the vagus nerve justifies thinking of the gut as a “second brain”—with butterflies in the tummy and other signs of emotion being manifestations of what she calls the “mind-gut connection.” “Feed the beast!” she thunders at the close, and the work that it does to keep the whole body performing at its best will “make you thrive, superstar.” Human figures in the illustrations vary in skin tone; one uses a wheelchair.
Expansive and effervescent. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9781922610973
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Berbay Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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