This is sure to start many down the path of mushroom foraging.
Kahn fills a gap on the mycology shelves for children with one child’s mushrooming adventures.
From the book’s start in spring until its close at the start of winter, Mason’s enthusiasm for collecting and eating mushrooms is palpable. With his dog and his basket, he heads out in different seasons and weather to check reliable spots for each of four varieties: morels in spring under the apple trees; chanterelles in early summer; lobster mushrooms in late summer under the hemlocks; and black trumpet mushrooms in autumn. Readers will learn the qualities that make each spot good for each variety, and they’ll also glean Mason’s tricks and tips for making sure each mushroom is the one he’s looking for. After his mushrooming adventures, he’s pictured with at least one adult at home inspecting the finds and then cooking: a morel omelet, pasta with chanterelles, lobster saute, and crispy black trumpet chips. A note to future foragers details the author’s prior experience with mushrooming and passes along two important pieces of information (twice!): Always check mushrooms with an experienced adult forager, and “When in doubt [about the species], throw it out.” Korbonski’s watercolor illustrations are evocative of each season and capture the enthusiasm of Mason and his pup well, though those who want to forage themselves may wish for photos as well. Mason and his family have pale skin; background characters have diverse skin tones. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This is sure to start many down the path of mushroom foraging. (additional information on the mushrooms Mason finds) (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-950584-88-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Science at its best: informative and gross.
Why not? Because “IT’S FULL OF GERMS.”
Of course, Ben-Barak rightly notes, so is everything else—from your socks to the top of Mount Everest. Just to demonstrate, he invites readers to undertake an exploratory adventure (only partly imaginary): First touch a certain seemingly blank spot on the page to pick up a microbe named Min, then in turn touch teeth, shirt, and navel to pick up Rae, Dennis, and Jake. In the process, readers watch crews of other microbes digging cavities (“Hey kid, brush your teeth less”), spreading “lovely filth,” and chowing down on huge rafts of dead skin. For the illustrations, Frost places dialogue balloons and small googly-eyed cartoon blobs of diverse shape and color onto Rundgren’s photographs, taken using a scanning electron microscope, of the fantastically rugged surfaces of seemingly smooth paper, a tooth, textile fibers, and the jumbled crevasses in a belly button. The tour concludes with more formal introductions and profiles for Min and the others: E. coli, Streptococcus, Aspergillus niger, and Corynebacteria. “Where will you take Min tomorrow?” the author asks teasingly. Maybe the nearest bar of soap.
Science at its best: informative and gross. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17536-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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