The author of the popular “Outside and Inside” series sticks to outsides in this photo album for younger readers—but the verbal and visual messages are definitely at odds. In big, bright color portraits, Adelie penguins, their adorably fluffy, clumsy looking chicks, and gull-like skuas all pose photogenically on a rocky, crowded Antarctic strand. Things are not as cozy as they seem, however, as the bleak accompanying commentary reveals: parents defend their own chicks (but weakly) from marauding skuas, but not the neighboring young at all; should the loss of one parent force the other to go after food, “the chick usually dies,” and chicks are abandoned wholesale anyway once molting season arrives. None of this is shown in the upbeat photographs, of course; the idea seems to be “no dead penguins.” Markle also refers to behavior that is not illustrated—adults fishing or tricking the skuas—identifies two Adelie penguin nurseries but does not locate them on her map, and offers no links to further sources of information. Though the text is considerably franker than most, this is patchy, uninspired work, not up to Markle’s usual excellent standard. (Nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-81887-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Commissioned to flesh out a storyline and create a spoken text for a New York City Ballet production set to the Saint-Saëns piece, Lithgow offers a tale of a wayward schoolboy who escapes his teacher during a museum visit, falls asleep surrounded by stuffed exhibits in a closed gallery, and dreams of his classmates, neighbors, music teacher, librarian, mother, and great-aunt as animals. The author once again shows his knack for brisk doggerel—“Oliver Pendleton Percy the Third / Was a mischievous imp of a lad. / The tricks that he played on Professor McByrd / Nearly drove the old schoolmaster mad.” Kulikov catches the rollicking comic tone with floridly dressed, theatrically posed figures bearing animal-like heads on humanoid bodies, or vice versa, performing for an amused-looking lad in a rumpled school blazer. An attendant CD features actor Lithgow’s animated reading, interspersed with musical passages from the production. Though not quite another “Peter and the Wolf,” this will give a much-performed orchestral piece a leg up with younger listeners—and it works at least as well on paper as it does on stage. (Picture book with CD. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-689-86721-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bishop’s spectacular photographs of the tiny red-eyed tree frog defeat an incidental text from Cowley (Singing Down the Rain, 1997, etc.). The frog, only two inches long, is enormous in this title; it appears along with other nocturnal residents of the rain forests of Central America, including the iguana, ant, katydid, caterpillar, and moth. In a final section, Cowley explains how small the frog is and aspects of its life cycle. The main text, however, is an afterthought to dramatic events in the photos, e.g., “But the red-eyed tree frog has been asleep all day. It wakes up hungry. What will it eat? Here is an iguana. Frogs do not eat iguanas.” Accompanying an astonishing photograph of the tree frog leaping away from a boa snake are three lines (“The snake flicks its tongue. It tastes frog in the air. Look out, frog!”) that neither advance nor complement the action. The layout employs pale and deep green pages and typeface, and large jewel-like photographs in which green and red dominate. The combination of such visually sophisticated pages and simplistic captions make this a top-heavy, unsatisfying title. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-87175-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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