Sprightly illustrations and engaging rhymes will leave readers eager to sample market bounty.
A collection of poems celebrates farmers markets.
Beginning with “Market Day Today,” Schaub encourages readers to “spy the wonders / on display” where “farmers chat” and “musicians play.” In “Early Risers,” farmers “harvest, sort, / wash, and load” produce at dawn, and in “Transformed,” they convert city spaces into “tasty transformations.” “Pile Up” describes brown-skinned Farmer Rick meticulously stacking cauliflowers, peppers, beets, and peas in “perfect symmetry,” while “Is It Ripe” offers clues on testing cherries, peaches, melons, and apricots. Other poems extol the scrumptious scent of freshly baked goods, the twang and rattle of market music, the “ear to ear” joy of sweet corn, honey’s “liquid-gold alchemy,” and “eggs-traordinary” free-range eggs. Empty produce crates and brimming cupboards offer closure in “Day’s End.” Humorous, detail-rich, fresh-toned watercolor, graphite, ink, and Photoshop illustrations introduce a brown-skinned farm boy, a white city girl, and their respective dogs, who provide a diverting visual subtext as they explore the market while chasing their rambunctious pets across double-page spreads. “Fresh-Picked Reasons to Spend a Day at the Market” offers useful data on farmers markets.
Sprightly illustrations and engaging rhymes will leave readers eager to sample market bounty. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58089-547-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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An excellent addition to classroom, library, or personal nature collections.
Who knew the food chain would make for such a jaunty rhyme?
“Far from the north, an island can be found. / Earth’s salty seas flow all around. / But who has the hungriest mouth / in the seas of the south?” There’s a great mass of plankton floating; something is coming to eat it…it could be a sea horse or a moon jelly. “No, no, no, it’s nothing like that. / It’s someone else in this habitat.” It’s pink Antarctic krill…but there’s a hungrier mouth heading toward the krill. It could be a petrel swooping down into the sea or a squid; nope, this time it’s a blue cod. Through each link in the food chain, two possibilities are offered before the answer is revealed. The animals get bigger and bigger until it’s an orca dining on a brown fur seal. British artist and teacher Walters’ debut is a fun-to-read rhyme that does an excellent job tracing one food chain from microscopic plankton to apex predator. The realistic animals in his cut-paper collages will remind adults of Steve Jenkins’ work, and young biologists will enjoy trying to identify each slightly larger mouth from just the lips (or beak) tantalizingly placed at the edge of every other recto. Backmatter completes the package, with further information, a matching activity, and a card game.
An excellent addition to classroom, library, or personal nature collections. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62855-631-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Arbordale Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Simple enough for preschool and kindergarten listeners but an effective introduction to a worldwide problem.
Disappointed when the end-of-summer sand-castle competition is postponed due to beach conditions, Cora starts campaigns to clean the beach and to avoid creating more plastic trash.
The storyline of this thinly disguised lesson is straightforward. The aspiring castle-contest–contestant tries to clean up the beach, finds the task overwhelming, discovers that people are often too busy to pick up the accumulated trash but can help in other ways, learns about animals thinking trash is food, enlists some friends, and, with other contestants on the trash-free beach, gets to build her castle after all. What distinguishes the presentation are Rewse’s colorful illustrations. They suggest a seaside community with a diverse population, palm trees, plenty of sun and sand, and, unfortunately (and all too realistically), a beach strewn with familiar plastic trash. Cora and her mother have brown skin and long textured hair, and there’s a pleasing variety of skin tones, hair colors and styles, and generations among the simply depicted characters. The beach-cleaners all wear gloves or use trash-picking poles. The final spread shows the sand-castle competition, and though Cora’s construction looks like a grand place to live, readers can see that others are even more complex or imaginative. But that’s not the end. Cora’s new project is a trash-reducing campaign. An author’s note provides more information about plastic trash and ways to avoid creating it.
Simple enough for preschool and kindergarten listeners but an effective introduction to a worldwide problem. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8075-0801-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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