A timely invitation to participate in raising energy consciousness.
Once a year, all over the world, people celebrate the electricity we use in our daily lives by turning off lights in homes, offices, and famous monuments for a single Earth Hour.
In time for next spring’s Earth Hour, March 29, 2020, this admirable debut offers both the what and the why. Luu’s cheery illustrations emphasize the worldwide nature of this event. The book begins with vignettes: examples of electricity use, including cozy home scenes, city streets, and the lit-up Earth as seen from space. Next, full pages and double-page spreads show illuminated buildings, cities, and internationally recognizable monuments at night. The scenes then move to the interior: bathtime, family games, and lights out. The international scenes reappear, without artificial light. The next to the last spread shows a single sleeping child (echoing Clement Hurd’s “great, green room”); the final one shows people of many colors and ethnicities (one using a wheelchair) carrying candles and lanterns on a starlit night: “Alone we are one… // …but together we have power. / United, we are Earth Hour.” Heffernan’s simple narrative runs across the pages, tying the story together. Her author’s note recalls her surprise at seeing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge go suddenly dark in honor of Earth Hour a few years ago, and a short final note connects energy use to global climate change.
A timely invitation to participate in raising energy consciousness. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-58089-942-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A boon for beaver storytimes or young naturalists living near beaver streams.
Readers learn about a keystone species and the habitat they create.
In a “House That Jack Built” style (though minus the cumulative repetition), Sonenshine introduces children to beavers. Beginning with a beaver who’s just gnawed down a willow near their lodge, the author moves on to the dam that blocks the stream and protects their domed home and then to the yearlings that are working to repair it with sticks and mud. Muskrats and a musk turtle take advantage of the safety of the beavers’ lodge, while Coyote tries (and fails) to breach it. Then the book turns to other animals that enjoy the benefits of the pond the beavers have created: goose, ducklings, heron, moose. While the beavers aren’t in all these illustrations, evidence of them is. And then suddenly a flood takes out both the dam and the beavers’ lodge. So, the beavers move upstream to find a new spot to dam and build again, coming full circle back to the beginning of the book. Hunter’s ink-and–colored pencil illustrations have a scratchy style that is well suited to the beavers’ pelts, their watery surroundings, and the other animals that share their habitat. Careful observers will be well rewarded by the tiny details. Beavers are mostly nocturnal, which isn’t always faithfully depicted by Hunter. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A boon for beaver storytimes or young naturalists living near beaver streams. (beaver facts, glossary, further resources) (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1868-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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