Like the rest of the series, charming, informative, and effective.
In his fourth book exploring “seriously funny facts about your favorite animals,” Eaton delivers “tons of information” about elephants.
Each spread provides essential and engaging facts on subtopics such as habitat, anatomy, diet, family structure, and behavior. One particularly effective spread shows the physiological differences between Asian elephants and African elephants, using arrows to point out differences between their trunks, toenails, ears, backs, and heads. With levity that never feels flippant, Eaton acknowledges that elephants’ “biggest threat wears shoes” and devotes a spread to the many different ways humans threaten elephants’ survival. The next spread encourages readers to consider ways that they can effect change: “The threats are enormous, but you can begin to help by reading about elephants, and then teaching others and speaking out. / Because elephants are worth it!” Excellent pacing and design result in a compelling read enhanced by digitally colored pen-and-ink cartoon illustrations filled with bold lines and bright colors. Talking animals and a brown-skinned child with a curly black ponytail provide light commentary on the facts presented in the main text, and readers may particularly enjoy the jazz (and joke) trio made up of the elephant’s closest living relatives. The final spread contains a dossier of illustrated photographs and notes and a list of additional resources for “calves” and “cows and bulls.”
Like the rest of the series, charming, informative, and effective. (Informational picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62672-669-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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