A mixed bag of vibrant artwork, silly rhymes, and a spark of curiosity, best enjoyed in a cozy lap.
In this follow-up to Cats Are a Liquid (2019), Donnelly and Saburi invite budding scientists to ponder further.
It is a trope of physical comedy that banana peels are comically and catastrophically slippery, but how slippery are they, really? Inspired by the real-life experiments of Japanese scientist Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Donnelly compares banana peels to a wide variety of materials that move, slide, and glide. From lava flows and jelly wobbles to their namesake, the banana slug, fluids, friction, and even fashion are explored with smiling, anthropomorphic banana peels and a bevy of diverse young scientists all along the way. Saburi’s round-headed and dot-eyed cartoon children and comical bananas are delightful, and the liquid cats even make an appearance. As with its predecessor, the text can often stray into nonsense (“Is a squid a banana that dives in the deep?”). While the illustrations are adorable and animated, the questions posed and comparisons made in the rhyming text are sometimes only tenuously tied to banana peels. Rather, the banana peel seems to be an arbitrary vehicle to introduce many unrelated experiments, from rocketry to botany. Because of this, though the text is simple and encourages a brisk pace, the spreads are best enjoyed when explored together with an adult who can call attention to these details. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-16-inch double-page spreads viewed at 39.1% of actual size.)
A mixed bag of vibrant artwork, silly rhymes, and a spark of curiosity, best enjoyed in a cozy lap. (author's note, activity) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-25686-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Godwin Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
So rocket science can be fun.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
If they haven’t already thought about their futures (and they probably haven’t), toddlers and preschoolers might start planning after perusing this cheerful first guide to scientific careers. Plump-cheeked, wide-eyed tykes with various skin and hair colors introduce different professions, including zoologist, meteorologist, aerospace engineer, and environmental scientist, depicted with cues to tip readers off to what the jobs entail. The simple text presents the sometimes-long, tongue-twisting career names while helpfully defining them in comprehensible terms. For example, an environmental scientist “helps take care of our world,” and a zoologist is defined as someone who “studies how animals behave.” Scientists in general are identified as those who “study, learn, and solve problems.” Such basic language not only benefits youngsters, but also offers adults sharing the book easy vocabulary with which to expand on conversations with kids about the professions. The title’s ebullient appearance is helped along by the typography: The jobs’ names are set in all caps, printed in color and in a larger font than the surrounding text, and emphasized with exclamation points. Additionally, the buoyant watercolors feature clues to what scientists in these fields work with, such as celestial bodies for astronomers. The youngest listeners won’t necessarily get all of this, but the book works as a rudimentary introduction to STEM topics and a shoutout to scientific endeavors.
So rocket science can be fun. (Informational picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62354-149-1
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
An understated, useful primer on one of nature’s miraculous cycles.
A piecemeal overview of the life cycle of a plant.
Using her signature minimalist prose and stripped-down art, Portis follows the journey of a sunflower seed from the moment it “settles into the soil” to its emergence as a blossom that eventually parents new sunflower plants. The entire text consists of one long sentence, broken up into fragments across the book’s spreads. Except for a few well-chosen double-page illustrations, the full-color artwork appears on the recto pages while the text appears on the verso pages. Readers watch as sunshine and rain help the seed grow into a bud and then a tall flower whose grandeur and height are accentuated by a switch from a horizontal page layout to a vertical one. The flower produces seeds, which are dispersed by birds after they feed, beginning the process of new plant growth all over again. The book offers a close-up look at plant reproduction using simple, accessible language that preschoolers can understand. Youngsters will feel a sense of awe as they witness the magic of a seed’s first tender shoot and the symbiosis of nature. The backmatter uses spot art to highlight the parts of a sunflower seed and plant and four things that “the seed needs to sprout”; it also includes a diagram of the sunflower’s life cycle.
An understated, useful primer on one of nature’s miraculous cycles. (Informational picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4892-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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