Readers (and Marjory) deserve better.
A visually rich look at the life of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a champion of the Everglades.
Vivid and lush, done in acrylic ink and colored pencil, the illustrations immediately greet readers with skies full of birds and flowers that create a horticultural rainbow. Alas, the bold, folk-style illustrations that provide so much visual interest cannot save a problematic text about a noteworthy woman. Vague, suggestive lines pepper the narrative, leading to more questions than answers: “…it would be a long time before Marjory felt the southern sunlight again. Or her father’s warm hug.” With no mention of a family separation to help them along, readers will be puzzled. “Finally, she found her voice. It wasn’t her father’s voice, her mother’s voice, or Aunt Fanny’s. It was entirely the voice of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.” Readers will wonder, did any of those people try to silence her? Her father (now back in the story) gave her the reporting job where she found that voice and used it to advocate for women’s suffrage. Marjory “became an activist” in her later years. But what was all of her advocacy prior to that? The fatal flaw of the text, however, lies in its promotion of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a white woman, as leader of the charge to save the Everglades, reducing the work of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes (and countless others) to a sentence in the author’s note. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Readers (and Marjory) deserve better. (timeline, environmental tips, sources, additional resources) (Picture book/biography. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3154-6
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
An interesting, absorbing browser.
Aspirationally encyclopedic, this survey covers the pig’s evolution, domestication, characteristics, adaptations, importance as a global food source, appearances in myth, and more.
Bird selects fresh facts. Pigs are resistant to snake venom. They’re as smart as dogs and capable of episodic memory—the ability to learn from past experiences. She’s forthcoming about scatological and reproductive attributes, too: Across cultures, the omnivorous pig has played a role as a household waste recycler, including of excrement. A “Facts of Life” section includes details about mating behaviors, the shape of a boar’s penis, and piglets’ growth stages. The rectum and anus figure in an anatomical illustration; Bird asserts that a “full-grown hog will produce six and a half pounds of manure a day.” She cheerfully addresses young readers: “Here’s a fact that may surprise you: pigs can swim!” Several spreads reveal the international array of meat products derived from the pig. “Everything but the Squeal” examines how collagen, bristles, skin, and even heart valves are utilized in industrial production and medicine. Pintonato’s illustrations vacillate between realistic details and fanciful tableaux. In an anthropomorphized spread about pig illnesses, several hospital beds contain pigs attended by health care workers. Additional sections include pigs in pop culture and as pets; thumbnails highlight 20 of the species’s more than 500 breeds. A table of contents is of marginal utility; the project entirely lacks indexing, documentation, or readers’ resources.
An interesting, absorbing browser. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61689-989-9
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Touching and informative: a beguiling invitation to share a branch with a pair of laid-back, uniquely adapted tree dwellers.
A slice of rainforest life.
In the same vein as their Secret Life of the Skunk (2019), Pringle pairs an intimate account of the life of a brown-throated three-fingered sloth to Garchinsky’s impressionistic crayon-and-pastel close-ups of their subjects. Both the protagonist sloth and, later, her offspring bear smiles that may seem at first glance to be anthropomorphic, but that is actually their natural expression. If naming the mother sloth Perezoso (Spanish for sloth, Pringle explains in his afterword) and later commenting that the two sloths sometimes go for a swim “just for fun” stretches reality a bit, in general the author sticks to plausible behavior and emotional responses in his evocatively slow, careful descriptions of the animal’s arboreal habits and physical features. Brushes with a harpy eagle and, following a once-a-week descent to ground level to poop, a jaguar provide dramatic moments, and the closing revelation that once young sloths have grown and learned enough to be independent, it’s the parent who leaves to find a new home range may surprise even well-read young naturalists. (They probably won’t be surprised by the final note about human threats to sloths and their habitats, though.)
Touching and informative: a beguiling invitation to share a branch with a pair of laid-back, uniquely adapted tree dwellers. (glossary, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63592-309-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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