A parrot costumed as detective leads readers through this collection of examples of animals “spying and prying” to find a mate, food or home or to avoid being eaten, of course, and animals tricking other eavesdroppers. While the conceit may be far-fetched, this is an appealing presentation of intriguing animal facts. Chapter by chapter, the text describes animals paying attention to each other and to other species. The examples are wide-ranging. Baboons, European robins and cichlids all look for a chance to horn in on a reproductive pair and get a chance to reproduce themselves. Predator fireflies watch for other firefly signal lights to pounce. Go-away-birds let dik-diks know when a predator is near. Siamese fighting fish watch others fight to challenge the loser; for female canaries, the loser is the best mate. And so on. A lively design includes photographs of the species, with notes attached. Each chapter has a slightly different colored background and is followed by an example of a further unusual behavior. Suggested additional reading, an exemplary bibliography and index complete the package. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55451-217-1
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
A frank, often funny appreciation of our space program’s high-water mark.
Brown launches the Big Ideas That Changed the World series with a graphic commemoration of the program that put boots on the moon.
Brown assumes the narrative voice of Rodman Law, a wisecracking professional daredevil who attempted to ride a rocket in 1913 (“Yeah, this oughta work”) and beat the odds by surviving the explosion. He opens with a capsule history of rocketry from ancient China to the Mercury and Gemini programs before recapping the Apollo missions. Keeping the tone light and offering nods as he goes to historical figures including Johann Schmidlap (“rhymes with ‘Fmidlap’ ”), “cranky loner” Robert Goddard, and mathematician Katherine Johnson, he focuses on technological advances that made space travel possible and on the awesome, sustained effort that brought President John F. Kennedy’s “Big Idea” to fruition, ending the narrative with our last visit to the moon. Aside from the numerous huge, raw explosions that punctuate his easy-to-follow sequential panels, the author uses restrained colors and loose, fluid modeling to give his mildly cartoonish depictions of figures and (then) cutting-edge technology an engagingly informal air. He doesn’t gloss over Laika’s sad fate or the ugly fact that Wernher von Braun built rockets for the Nazis with “concentration-camp prisoners.” Occasional interjections and a closing author’s note also signal Brown’s awareness that for this story, at least, his cast had to be almost exclusively white and male.
A frank, often funny appreciation of our space program’s high-water mark. (index, endnotes, resource lists) (Graphic nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3404-5
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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