An awesome odyssey that also makes a telling point, both worthy of repeated iterations.
A ducky’s-eye view of an ocean rapidly becoming more polluted.
Speaking for 28,000 bath toys that were washed overboard on the way from Hong Kong to Seattle in 1992, a yellow plastic duck tells its story—from rolling off first a Chinese assembly line and then later a huge cargo ship at sea to, long afterward, floating at last in a child’s tub after being plucked from the flotsam on a littered beach. This plot may seem familiar to readers of Eve Bunting’s still-in-print Ducky, illustrated by David Wisniewski (1997). What’s new is how, while bobbing over busy ocean depths, past colorful fish and undulating jellies, Motum’s narrator witnesses a whale swallowing a plastic bag, a struggling sea turtle tangled in a fishing net, and the vast swirl of waste plastic dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The author goes for a broad view in both wide-angled illustrations of litter floating or washed ashore and in adding notes about ocean currents, the value as well as hazards of plastics, and other related topics to his urgent message that our oceans are in trouble. A set of activities and organizations at the end add fresh incentive for young recyclers and eco-activists to get off the stick. Workers in early scenes have Asian features; the child and their dad at the end appear to be White.
An awesome odyssey that also makes a telling point, both worthy of repeated iterations. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1772-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Confusing topical drift muddles this quick but creditable dip into Newtonian physics.
A first introduction to what matter is—and isn’t.
Setting off on a potentially confusing tangent at the outset, Diehn opens with a discourse on how we use the word “matter” in common speech—as in “What’s the matter?” or “That doesn’t matter.” Following a perfunctory segue she then launches into her actual subject with a simple but not simplistic definition (“Matter is anything that takes up space and can be weighed”). She continues with easy-to-follow explanations of how matter (even air) can be weighed, how it comes in the states of solid, liquid, gas, and plasma, and finally how light is not matter but something else. Companion volumes on Energy, Forces, and Waves offer overviews that are likewise lucid, albeit similarly muddied by strained and, in the end, irrelevant word usages. All four surveys include questions and simple activities for readers. Shululu illustrates all four with a cast of wide-eyed, cherry-nosed figures of varying skin colors and their floppy-eared dog in active poses and, usually, outdoor settings.
Confusing topical drift muddles this quick but creditable dip into Newtonian physics. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61930-642-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nomad Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Another “humerus” study in comparative anatomy.
A comparison of select human and dinosaur bones connects readers with some of our more ancient predecessors.
Continuing the approach of Bone by Bone (2013) and Tooth by Tooth (2016), Levine points up parallels between fossilized skulls, ribs, toes, and other skeletal features and those of modern readers as well as prehistoric frills, horns, and the like that we don’t happen to sport. Some of this she presents as easy posers: what sort of dino would you be if you both had a long neck and “your vertebrae didn’t stop at your rear end but kept going and going and going?” Diplodocus, perhaps, or, she properly notes on the ensuing double gatefold, another type of sauropod. What if you had two finger bones per hand rather than five? T. Rex! If your pinky bone grew tremendously long? A pterosaur! Just for fun, in the simple but anatomically careful illustrations, Spookytooth temporarily alters members of a cast of, mostly, brown-skinned young museumgoers (two wearing hijabs) to reflect the exaggerated lengths, sizes, or other adaptations certain bones underwent in dinosaurs and several other types of extinct reptiles. Generous lists of websites and other information sources follow a revelation (that won’t come as a surprise to confirmed dino fans) that birds are dinosaurs too.
Another “humerus” study in comparative anatomy. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4677-9489-3
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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