A lovely, whimsical celebration of Winnipeg’s varied architecture.
Bridgman’s fanciful painted depiction of Winnipeg, Manitoba’s landmarks introduces young readers to the many architectural wonders in the Canadian city.
Using the framework of owls flying over the city and noticing various buildings and structures, this alphabet book assigns a Winnipeg landmark to each letter. The alphabet pages feature spare text, highlighting the featured letter each time it appears. Paired letters spread rhymes across subsequent pages: “C is for Children’s Museum, a place for all. / D is for Dominion Bank—those columns are tall.” Detailed discussions of each landmark fill the later pages, written to be engaging for independent young readers interested in the details of each location. While the landmarks may be very familiar to Winnipeg residents, readers from other locations could not be blamed for wondering how so many marvels fit into one city. The Flying Saucer—a circular, elevated apartment building—is illustrated as flying above the city on a floating island. The Royal Canadian Mint, though it matches the shape of the actual building, is made to appear like a glowing mountain with a sun behind it (a snowscape occupies the foreground). Thunderbird House is depicted as sitting on rainbow tiles; the Exchange District has a dragon curled around one of its buildings. These whimsical touches make for captivating images that locals will surely appreciate, but they may confuse nonresidents. Luckily, the highly detailed descriptions in the back half of the book provide real context for each building and showcase the many different types of structures included, including government institutions, housing, museums, bridges, and more. While Bridgman sometimes stretches for her rhymes with convoluted sentence structures (“stories and stars here do meet”), overall, each page is accessible for young lap readers; the end pages, and Bridgman’s beautiful art (each page features a hidden, or not so hidden, owl), extend the book’s appeal to a middle-grade audience, who could use the text for school reports.
A lovely, whimsical celebration of Winnipeg’s varied architecture.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
A good introduction to observation, data, and trying again.
Cece loves asking “why” and “what if.”
Her parents encourage her, as does her science teacher, Ms. Curie (a wink to adult readers). When Cece and her best friend, Isaac, pair up for a science project, they choose zoology, brainstorming questions they might research. They decide to investigate whether dogs eat vegetables, using Cece’s schnauzer, Einstein, and the next day they head to Cece’s lab (inside her treehouse). Wearing white lab coats, the two observe their subject and then offer him different kinds of vegetables, alone and with toppings. Cece is discouraged when Einstein won’t eat them. She complains to her parents, “Maybe I’m not a real scientist after all….Our project was boring.” Just then, Einstein sniffs Cece’s dessert, leading her to try a new way to get Einstein to eat vegetables. Cece learns that “real scientists have fun finding answers too.” Harrison’s clean, bright illustrations add expression and personality to the story. Science report inserts are reminiscent of The Magic Schoolbus books, with less detail. Biracial Cece is a brown, freckled girl with curly hair; her father is white, and her mother has brown skin and long, black hair; Isaac and Ms. Curie both have pale skin and dark hair. While the book doesn’t pack a particularly strong emotional or educational punch, this endearing protagonist earns a place on the children’s STEM shelf.
A good introduction to observation, data, and trying again. (glossary) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-249960-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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