This picture book is a pleasure to read and is sure to become the favorite of some future naturalist.
Children know that wild animals live outside, and this book offers them the opportunity to see where and learn how they live.
In Holland’s crisp photographs, readers will see animals and their habitats up close and in detail. Each image is bright and clear, revealing impressive amounts of texture. One can imagine the slick foam of the spittle bug’s home, the smooth coat of a black bear, or the coarse nubbling of bark. The very first spread presents a picture of a beaver with webbed feet and remarkably interesting claws that look like human fingernails; it appears as an inset over a full-bleed, spread-spanning photo of a beaver lodge in an autumn landscape. A few pages in, there is an equally striking shot of a bald-faced hornet and another of an army of tent caterpillars building silk. In total, the book covers 12 animals and insects and would be useful to bring along during a camping trip, a walk through a local park, or even a walk to a favorite neighborhood tree, so that children will have the opportunity to see and perhaps interact with some of the habitats of the animals around them. Four pages of backmatter encourage further engagement with the topic. Holland also carefully introduces new vocabulary to children, folding in such words as “burrow,” “drey,” and “snag” throughout, with explanations within the text. (Due to Covid complications, this book will publish in paperback on pub date and in hardcover in Jan. 2021.)
This picture book is a pleasure to read and is sure to become the favorite of some future naturalist. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64351-750-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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