Facts about chlorophyll combine with a sense of wonder.
Art and text move through summer, fall, winter, and spring to explain the science behind the seasonal changes in deciduous trees.
“What kinds of leaves do you see in the summer?” The opening double-page spread has a stark white background. Seventeen different trees are represented by a scattered array of leaves—each carefully labeled—in many gradations of green. The enticing collage art uses negative space to show the veins. The page turn leads to additional glorious art, affirming the text’s use of such words as “emerald” and “jade.” Lush canopies of summer leaves part just enough to reveal, in the distance, people and a dog paddling a red canoe across a lake. Although all the illustrations concentrate on tree leaves, they occasionally include similar scenes of seasonal human activities—subtle reminders that humans are also affected by nature’s cycles. The text uses some anthropomorphism (trees and/or their leaves conceal “secrets,” “wait,” “make food,” and sleep) as it introduces young readers to chloroplasts, chlorophyll, plant cells, and the process of photosynthesis as well as the role of fallen leaves in an ecosystem. After the final double-page spread, which reveals a world returned to springtime, there are two pages written in a straightforward, scientific manner, supplementing the earlier text with further information about leaves—including differentiation between deciduous trees and evergreens and the names and characteristics of pigments hidden beneath a leaf’s chlorophyll.
Facts about chlorophyll combine with a sense of wonder. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-2899-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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
An informative and accessible child’s-eye view of STEM careers.
Aspiring young scientists, take heed!
Traveling on a ship to the North Pole would seem an adventure in itself, but the young, unnamed narrator, whose mother heads up a team of marine biologists, also gets to meet eight other scientists involved in other specialties. On almost every page of this early reader, we encounter someone engaged in different fieldwork: a hydrologist, a microbiologist, a geologist, a seismologist, a climate scientist, a meteorologist, a zoologist, and an astronomer. As the narrator thinks about careers in science, more specialty roles—botanist, epidemiologist, and physicist—are added to the list. The work of these scientists is clearly and simply explained. (Appended is a short list with descriptions of 10 specialties.) The unfussy illustrations are washed in glowing colors, with many shades of blue; when snow forms the background, the scientists’ bright jackets pop. The ship itself is a fire-engine red. Beginners might need help reading or pronouncing some of the researchers’ special fields, but overall this is an engaging introduction to a wide and important area of work. The scientists include men and women and are racially diverse. The narrator and Mom are light-skinned; the child uses crutches.
An informative and accessible child’s-eye view of STEM careers. (Early reader/nonfiction. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780062989659
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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