Pleasing and stimulating.
From pompoms to Ph.D.!
Mireya Mayor, a Cuban American primatologist who grew up in Miami, was interested in wild animals from a young age—her childhood home teemed with animals, from dogs to snapping turtles to a chicken and everything in between. Although her interest in nature hit a speed bump when her mother sent her to ballet class instead of letting her join the Girl Scouts, Mireya discovered a talent for dance that led to her becoming an NFL cheerleader while she attended college. Her desire to work with animals—particularly primates—led her to international fieldwork in the jungles of South America as well as struggles with colleagues who judged Mireya based on her looks and not her accomplishments. Her continued work in far-off places caught the attention of National Geographic, which made her its first woman wildlife TV reporter, and on an expedition to Madagascar, Mireya discovered a new species of lemur. With this discovery, Mireya successfully petitioned the prime minister of Madagascar to create a national park to ensure the lemur’s survival. The story effectively documents Mireya’s career path, and attentive readers and caregivers will have moments to consider themes of prejudice and how everyone has unlimited capability for divergent interests. The backmatter, which contains additional information about mouse lemurs and the lemur reserve and an author’s note with more details about Mireya’s career path, including how she obtained her doctorate, will help direct curious readers to learn more. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Pleasing and stimulating. (glossary, further reading) (Picture-book biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8075-4085-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
A winning heads up for younger readers just becoming aware of the wider natural world.
An appeal to share concern for 12 familiar but threatened, endangered, or critically endangered animal species.
The subjects of Marino’s intimate, close-up portraits—fairly naturalistically rendered, though most are also smiling, glancing up at viewers through human eyes, and posed at rest with a cute youngling on lap or flank—steal the show. Still, Clinton’s accompanying tally of facts about each one’s habitat and daily routines, to which the title serves as an ongoing refrain, adds refreshingly unsentimental notes: “A single giraffe kick can kill a lion!”; “[S]hivers of whale sharks can sense a drop of blood if it’s in the water nearby, though they eat mainly plankton.” Along with tucking in collective nouns for each animal (some not likely to be found in major, or any, dictionaries: an “embarrassment” of giant pandas?), the author systematically cites geographical range, endangered status, and assumed reasons for that status, such as pollution, poaching, or environmental change. She also explains the specific meaning of “endangered” and some of its causes before closing with a set of doable activities (all uncontroversial aside from the suggestion to support and visit zoos) and a list of international animal days to celebrate.
A winning heads up for younger readers just becoming aware of the wider natural world. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51432-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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