A funny and nutritious flow of information.
The blue-footed birds with the funny name do put in cameos but are not the subject here.
With tongue so firmly in cheek that it may be hard to extract, Vo plays deliriously with words and expectations but also delivers a frank overview of mammary glands across (relevant) species and even (as pictures of stylized but unmistakably female figurines from prehistoric Austria, the Cyclades, and Ghana demonstrate) the ages. Repeating the titular sobriquet as often as possible, she explains what they’re for (even adding a mention of plant-based milk) and notes that different mammals have different numbers of breasts, from a cow’s four “booby tubes” (“Udderly fascinating!”) to a mother dog’s 10. Humans, she writes, have two, and they are called “breasts.” The stencil art is highlighted both by an image of a dark-skinned human adult breastfeeding an infant and, to suggest the wide variety of breast shapes and sizes, an entire page of them rendered as daubs and dots—mostly in pairs but including representations of single and double mastectomies. Human figures elsewhere are diversely hued and discreetly posed or clothed. Along with transforming any future mention of the Grand Tetons into an occasion for giggles (“There are mountains that some say are named after boobies”), this disquisition will turn young audiences into expert “boobiologists.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A funny and nutritious flow of information. (source note) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77306-692-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched.
An amiable introduction to our thrifty, sociable, teeming insect cousins.
Bunting notes that all the ants on Earth weigh roughly the same as all the people and observes that ants (like, supposedly, us) love recycling, helping others, and taking “micronaps.” They, too, live in groups, and their “superpower” is an ability to work together to accomplish amazing things. Bunting goes on to describe different sorts of ants within the colony (“Drone. Male. Does no housework. Takes to the sky. Reproduces. Drops dead”), how they communicate using pheromones, and how they get from egg to adult. He concludes that we could learn a lot from them that would help us leave our planet in better shape than it was when we arrived. If he takes a pass on mentioning a few less positive shared traits (such as our tendency to wage war on one another), still, his comparisons do invite young readers to observe the natural world more closely and to reflect on our connections to it. In the simple illustrations, generic black ants look up at viewers with little googly eyes while scurrying about the pages gathering food, keeping nests clean, and carrying outsized burdens.
Lighthearted and informative, though the premise may be a bit stretched. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593567784
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
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