A beautiful and informative title for a sense-of-wonder storytime.
Around the world, natural events make the sky glow.
With a simple, repetitive verse and short explanatory descriptions, Beckerman presents occasions when the sky fills with light and color. The sun’s rising and setting, lightning storms, rainbows, solar eclipses, full moons, volcanic eruptions, mating fireflies, meteor showers, and auroras—all are opportunities to admire unusual displays in the natural world. Litchfield’s color-drenched illustrations glow as well. They show people appreciating nature in a variety of environments. This picture series begins and ends with a child in bed: a red-haired, light-skinned child rising with the sun in a rural setting; a dark-skinned boy waking in a city. Each topic is presented on a spread on which a few words on a block of color on the recto oppose a full-bleed image; this is followed by a luminous double-page scene illustrating the sky’s glow. An explanatory paragraph is relatively unobtrusive on the lower right—truly a two-level text. In one image, a brown-skinned photographer is almost hidden behind a camera; the page turn reveals that they are taking advantage of a golden sunset to photograph large African animals. On another spread, a light-skinned adult and child walk through a firefly-filled woods, and on another page, seated around a campfire, a tan-skinned family admires meteors showering from the sky (in unlikely numbers). The backmatter mentions light pollution and offers sources for further research. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A beautiful and informative title for a sense-of-wonder storytime. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5039-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard.
Rotner follows Hello Spring (2017) with this salute to the fall season.
Name a change seen in northern climes in fall, and Rotner likely covers it here, from plants, trees, and animals to the food we harvest: seeds are spread, the days grow shorter and cooler, the leaves change and fall (and are raked up and jumped in), some animals migrate, and many families celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. As in the previous book, the photographs (presented in a variety of sizes and layouts, all clean) are the stars here, displaying both the myriad changes of the season and a multicultural array of children enjoying the outdoors in fall. These are set against white backgrounds that make the reddish-orange print pop. The text itself uses short sentences and some solid vocabulary (though “deep sleep” is used instead of “hibernate”) to teach readers the markers of autumn, though in the quest for simplicity, Rotner sacrifices some truth. In several cases, the addition of just a few words would have made the following oversimplified statements reflect reality: “Birds grow more feathers”; “Cranberries float and turn red.” Also, Rotner includes the statement “Bees store extra honey in their hives” on a page about animals going into deep sleep, implying that honeybees hibernate, which is false.
Bruce Goldstone’s Awesome Autumn (2012) is still the gold standard. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3869-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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