Calling all sea otter fans! (sources) (Nonfiction. 7-10)
Photojournalism tells the true story of Rialto, a rescued baby sea otter, along with many scientific and historical facts about sea otters.
Readers of Jean Reidy’s poetic, almost mystical, picture book Pup 681: A Sea Otter Rescue Story, illustrated by Ashley Crowley (2019), can seek out Mapes’ book for more facts about these critters. The text begins with simple sentences about the eponymous baby otter—named for Washington’s Rialto Beach, where he was stranded—but soon offers much more information than a tale of rescue and rehabilitation. By the text’s third page, readers have learned these facts: Normally, babies stay close to their mothers; they have “very loud voices so their mothers can hear them over the wind and waves”; sea otters are legally protected. The next page includes a full paragraph about baby sea otters’ dependency on their mothers, then a second paragraph that lists the babies’ predators and states that their survival rate in the wild is 50 percent. By the time Rialto is thriving in the Seattle Aquarium (prior to a permanent move to the Vancouver Aquarium), readers have learned about sea otter diet, fur, teeth, habits, and more. Before Rialto moves, there are 10 paragraphs and a map devoted to the otters’ human-caused, near extinction and their human-aided comeback. The clever truth: Less-motivated readers can view each of the numerous, oh-so-cute-and-cuddly photographs, then read their detailed captions to get the story’s condensed version.
Calling all sea otter fans! (sources) (Nonfiction. 7-10)Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-14764-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
A quick flight but a blast from first to last.
A charged-up roundup of astro-facts.
Having previously explored everything awesome about both dinosaurs (2019) and sharks (2020), Lowery now heads out along a well-traveled route, taking readers from the Big Bang through a planet-by-planet tour of the solar system and then through a selection of space-exploration highlights. The survey isn’t unique, but Lowery does pour on the gosh-wow by filling each hand-lettered, poster-style spread with emphatic colors and graphics. He also goes for the awesome in his selection of facts—so that readers get nothing about Newton’s laws of motion, for instance, but will come away knowing that just 65 years separate the Wright brothers’ flight and the first moon landing. They’ll also learn that space is silent but smells like burned steak (according to astronaut Chris Hadfield), that thanks to microgravity no one snores on the International Space Station, and that Buzz Aldrin was the first man on the moon…to use the bathroom. And, along with a set of forgettable space jokes (OK, one: “Why did the carnivore eat the shooting star?” “Because it was meteor”), the backmatter features drawing instructions for budding space artists and a short but choice reading list. Nods to Katherine Johnson and NASA’s other African American “computers” as well as astronomer Vera Rubin give women a solid presence in the otherwise male and largely White cast of humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A quick flight but a blast from first to last. (Informational picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-35974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts.
From a Caldecott and Sibert honoree, an invitation to take a mind-expanding journey from the surface of our planet to the furthest reaches of the observable cosmos.
Though Chin’s assumption that we are even capable of understanding the scope of the universe is quixotic at best, he does effectively lead viewers on a journey that captures a sense of its scale. Following the model of Kees Boeke’s classic Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (1957), he starts with four 8-year-old sky watchers of average height (and different racial presentations). They peer into a telescope and then are comically startled by the sudden arrival of an ostrich that is twice as tall…and then a giraffe that is over twice as tall as that…and going onward and upward, with ellipses at each page turn connecting the stages, past our atmosphere and solar system to the cosmic web of galactic superclusters. As he goes, precisely drawn earthly figures and features in the expansive illustrations give way to ever smaller celestial bodies and finally to glimmering swirls of distant lights against gulfs of deep black before ultimately returning to his starting place. A closing recap adds smaller images and additional details. Accompanying the spare narrative, valuable side notes supply specific lengths or distances and define their units of measure, accurately explain astronomical phenomena, and close with the provocative observation that “the observable universe is centered on us, but we are not in the center of the entire universe.”
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts. (afterword, websites, further reading) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4623-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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