This view into Procter’s brief life connects her early passion for reptiles with her innovative career combining scientific...
Valdez introduces Joan Procter, whose lifelong love of reptiles yielded a career at London’s Natural History Museum and the London Zoo.
Avid for reptiles from childhood, Joan received a crocodile for her 16th birthday. First assisting, then succeeding the museum’s curator of reptiles, Joan surveyed the collections, published papers, and made models for exhibits. Her designs for the zoo’s reptile house incorporated innovative lighting and heating as well as plants and artwork evoking the reptiles’ habitats. Joan’s reputation soared with the arrival of two 7-foot-long Komodo dragons, coinciding with the reptile house’s opening. Presenting a paper at the Zoological Society, Joan brought along one of them, Sumbawa, who ate a pigeon whole and strolled among attendees. Valdez’s narrative alludes to Procter’s poor health obliquely: pet reptiles cheered her “on the days Joan was too sick to attend school,” and a later spread depicts her “riding through the zoo” in a wheelchair. (An appended note explains that a “chronic intestinal illness” led to Joan’s death at just 34.) Sala portrays stylized reptiles and 1920s-era British clothing. People’s skin tones range from stark white to various tans and browns. Indeed, although she was white, Joan’s skin varies throughout, sometimes appearing white and pink and others times various shades of beige.
This view into Procter’s brief life connects her early passion for reptiles with her innovative career combining scientific research, practice, art, and design. (author’s note, bibliography of primary sources, photographs) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55725-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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
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