A whimsical way to teach budding environmentalists about trees around the world.
“No one is too small to make a difference,” as the leaflings tell us.
In this guide’s delightful conceit, every tree has its tiny leafling, and every leafling has a specific role: protecting, connecting, constructing, etc. Leaflings resemble smiling seed pods with big, round eyes and small bodies, some in minute skirts. Whatever their tree roles, their job in this book is to explain how trees work, and they do it winningly. Akina and Hiroki tell us about sakura, while Iarla and Etain cover holly. Hugo takes on the kapok; several real-life critters that make their home in this giant South American tree can be found here along with information on photosynthesis. On to oak, baobab, kauri, red river gum, redwood, peepal, Huangshan pine, and sweet chestnut, each with companion leaflings and assorted animals. Among the few humans are a child who uses a wheelchair, one in hijab, and several who are brown-skinned; among leaflings, faces might be green, tan, pale, etc., while some bodies are wide, others tall. There’s information about city trees and advice on observing nature. The use of intricate serif fonts dictates lap- or independent-reading only; indeed, the delicate, detailed, page-filling watercolor and ink illustrations (like a naturalist’s notebook) are for poring over. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A whimsical way to teach budding environmentalists about trees around the world. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78342-522-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Bonnier/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Nevertheless, next to such artful treatments as The Carrot Seed and And Then It’s Spring, by Julie Fogliano and illustrated...
A verbal and visual tone poem involving a seed, a wish and time.
A text afflicted with grammatical ambiguity (“If you hold a seed / And make a wish, / And plant it in the ground…”) and an unlikely claim that “When autumn comes again, / [The tree] will lean into the wind” chronicles the growth of a tree. With it, the book follows the boy who plants it over years and seasons until he sits, an adult, on one of its branches to show another seed in turn to a child. The seeds depicted are just generic blobs, and despite recognizable birds and butterflies in MacKay’s paper-collage scenes, her pervasive use of extremely soft focus backgrounds and slow shifts of hue set aside specific depictions of natural detail in favor of a dreamy, abstract evocation of time’s passage. Likewise, except for some of the animals, her figures look down, away or off to the side, which will have the effect of distancing viewers—younger ones, at least. MacKay’s debut could have used better writing, but artistically, she does show unusual sensitivity to effects of color and light.
Nevertheless, next to such artful treatments as The Carrot Seed and And Then It’s Spring, by Julie Fogliano and illustrated by Erin E. Stead (2012), it pretty much defines “additional purchase.” (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7624-4721-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Not even the relatively lengthy afterword can fill all the holes in this superficial, less-than-compelling profile.
A strangely uninformative look at a python’s life and life cycle.
A python (identified in the closing note as an Australian diamond python) slithers from shelter to bask in the sun, shed her skin and nab a rat (after missing a bird). Suddenly eggs appear, as if from nowhere. The python conscientiously incubates them until they begin to hatch, then abruptly departs to let her offspring “start their own lives of smelling, resting, watching…and waiting.” The earnest narrative is accompanied on each spread by additional details in an insufficiently different typeface. Cheng slides past any direct mention of death (“When the rat can no longer breathe, dinner is ready”), drops in a vague reference to unidentified egg “predators” and presents at best a sketchy overview of snake anatomy. Readers wondering how pythons get around, how those eggs came to be fertilized or laid, and like questions will find no answers here—either in the text or in Jackson’s muddy, indistinct painted illustrations.
Not even the relatively lengthy afterword can fill all the holes in this superficial, less-than-compelling profile. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6396-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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