A buoyant view of a natural cycle, loaded with visual and verbal appeal.
A fetching invitation to clamber over the “guano-frosted rocks” of a seabird nesting site off the coast of Maine and look on as two feathered parents nurture their new puffling.
Gianferrari and Wicks put in personal appearances in the final pages of art to explain how researchers helped puffins make a comeback on the island of Eastern Egg Rock and how readers can help. Before that, though, it’s largely a bird’s world as two puffins, animated by subtle hints of smiles and other expressions, do their best to protect their prized egg, then keep their hatchling safe and fed after she emerges from the shell with an urgent message: “It’s time to eat!” Puffin parenting turns out to be hard work, not to mention dangerous: “Sharing the city with gulls is tricky” when the marauders can swoop down at any time to snatch away a mouthful of harvested fish or even an errant chick. In time, though, Little Puffin fledges, then dives into the sea where she will fly underwater to feed, join a “floating city” of other puffins, and years later return to the nesting site, find a mate—and pose proudly with downy offspring of her own in a final scene. Gianferrari’s playful prose pairs beautifully with Wicks’ dramatic artwork, which alternates graphic novel–esque panels with full-page spreads for an immersive journey into an enticing avian world.
A buoyant view of a natural cycle, loaded with visual and verbal appeal. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781250357373
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap.
Budding naturalists who dug We Dig Worms! (2015) will, well, coo over this similarly enlightening accolade.
A curmudgeonly park visitor’s “They’re RATS with wings!” sparks spirited rejoinders from a racially diverse flock of children wearing full-body bird outfits, who swoop down to deliver a mess of pigeon facts. Along with being related to the dodo, “rock doves” fly faster than a car, mate for life, have been crossbred into all sorts of “fancies,” inspired Pablo Picasso to name his daughter “Paloma” in their honor, can be eaten (“Tastes like chicken”), and, like penguins and flamingos, create “pigeon milk” in their crops for their hatchlings. Painted on light blue art paper—“the kind,” writes McCloskey in his afterword, “used by Picasso”—expertly depicted pigeons of diverse breeds common and fancy strut their stuff, with views of the children and other wild creatures, plus occasional helpful labels, interspersed. In the chastened parkgoer’s eyes, as in those of the newly independent readers to whom this is aimed, the often maligned birds are “wonderful.” Cue a fresh set of costumed children on the final page, gearing up to set him straight on squirrels.
Another feather in McCloskey’s cap. (Graphic informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-935179-93-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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