An appropriate companion to Wolf Island (2017) to nourish the sense of wonder.
A nature photographer shares his images of young bearhood in the Great Bear Rainforest.
Appropriately, McAllister’s name comes first on the cover and title page. The heart of this album is his photography: two beautiful landscapes showing the pristine Great Bear Rainforest bookend many, many close-ups of bears. There are grizzly bears, black bears, and the one-in-10 black bear with white fur that is called a spirit bear. Aimed at young readers and listeners, the simple text focuses on the lives of bear cubs and their parents, finding food—plant shoots and berries, barnacles and other seashore treats, salmon—napping, exploring, and playing. Most spreads include a full-page photo (or one crossing the fold) and one or two smaller ones plus a paragraph or two. There’s no attempt to explain the location of this pristine coastal wilderness in British Columbia, which the author and photographer have described in such books for older readers as The Salmon Bears (2010) and other titles. There is, though, a nod to the indigenous human inhabitants with a summary of the Raven tale explaining the existence of the white bears. There’s also an intriguing description of bear fishing styles: grabbing, scooping, pinning, crushing.
An appropriate companion to Wolf Island (2017) to nourish the sense of wonder. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1270-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
