Too many incongruities and unpacked issues to stay on track, if well meant.
Fourteen endangered or threatened animals highlight their plights in perky rhyme.
"With a ruddy red appearance, I’m very cute. / I grow big and strong eating insects and fruit.” Frequently privileging metrics over precise language or even meaning, Jaeger adds to the gallery begun in Who Will Roar If I Go? (2018) with lyrics from the orangutan (depicted by Quirk with pale orange hair and a woefully shriveled-looking arm) as well as the addax, the Eurasian lynx, the tapir, the pygmy hippo, and like rarities. Along with a blithe assurance that the ivory-billed woodpecker is extant (which is still subject to debate), the author makes some head-scratching observations. The red panda informs readers, “My feet can swivel all the way around / Which allows me to walk upside down!” and the orang states, “Our forest homes disappear each year / Due to some palm-growing racketeer.” A closing section offers prose “Factoids” cast as riddles—with answers directly attached. The illustrations make a stronger case for concern, with creatures who, though looking diaphanous and placed in even more airy natural settings, gaze up at viewers with knowing or quizzical expressions as if actually asking the cogent titular question.
Too many incongruities and unpacked issues to stay on track, if well meant. (glossary) (Informational picture book/poetry. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945448-59-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: BQB Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
An amiable point-counterpoint for budding animal lovers/haters.
Forty-two creatures of ill repute, from scorpions to hyenas, put on their best faces and protest that they’re just misunderstood.
In paired double-page spreads, Corrigan first presents for each animal the case for considering it scary or gross, then, with the page turn, allows it to contradict itself. “I’m creepy and I’m crawly,” a spider supposedly gloats. “I spin webs from my butt and leave them in places where I KNOW you’ll get stuck in them.” In the following spread, the spider points out that “Only half of my kind spin webs, and we really, REALLY don’t want you to get stuck in them!” Along with pointing to roles in the natural order and including many crowd-pleasing references to butts and poop, these counterarguments tend to run along the lines of the rat’s “I’m a fluffy little SWEETIE!” and the toad’s “I am a plump lump of CUTENESS!” Each testimonial is backed up by a box of background information baldly labeled “FACTS.” Readers may find the chorus of smiley faces and claims of adorability unconvincing, but they will at least come away with more nuanced impressions of each creepy-crawly. The humorous cartoon illustrations don’t measure up to the in-your-face photos of Seymour Simon’s classic Animals Nobody Loves (2001), but this gallery of beasties unfairly regarded as “icky and ewwy and downright gross” is considerably broader.
An amiable point-counterpoint for budding animal lovers/haters. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4748-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A winning heads up for younger readers just becoming aware of the wider natural world.
An appeal to share concern for 12 familiar but threatened, endangered, or critically endangered animal species.
The subjects of Marino’s intimate, close-up portraits—fairly naturalistically rendered, though most are also smiling, glancing up at viewers through human eyes, and posed at rest with a cute youngling on lap or flank—steal the show. Still, Clinton’s accompanying tally of facts about each one’s habitat and daily routines, to which the title serves as an ongoing refrain, adds refreshingly unsentimental notes: “A single giraffe kick can kill a lion!”; “[S]hivers of whale sharks can sense a drop of blood if it’s in the water nearby, though they eat mainly plankton.” Along with tucking in collective nouns for each animal (some not likely to be found in major, or any, dictionaries: an “embarrassment” of giant pandas?), the author systematically cites geographical range, endangered status, and assumed reasons for that status, such as pollution, poaching, or environmental change. She also explains the specific meaning of “endangered” and some of its causes before closing with a set of doable activities (all uncontroversial aside from the suggestion to support and visit zoos) and a list of international animal days to celebrate.
A winning heads up for younger readers just becoming aware of the wider natural world. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51432-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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