A serviceable introduction to a hot topic.
Ritchie’s five friends are back and learning about urban beekeeping in this newest outing in the Exploring Our Community series.
Their guide is Mr. Cardinal, who keeps two hives in his pesticide-free, dandelion-dotted backyard garden. The kids help him pick out new, native flowers at the nursery to add to his garden before visiting a local pollinator garden. They look sadly at a new building going up in a formerly vacant lot before returning to Mr. Cardinal’s to harvest honey and put it into jars. Nick is stung and calmly sits while Mr. Cardinal extracts the stinger and treats the sting. Throughout, bee facts are imparted in the running narrative, in supplemental expository text on each topical spread and in dialogue balloons (“Bees like purple, blue and yellow flowers,” says Pedro; “They can’t see the color red!” adds Yulee). Tips on helping bees and a glossary close the tale. While there is some oversimplification (the extraction of honey for market is far quicker and less messy than in real life), most of the information presented is solid, with the unfortunate exception of the illustration of a feral beehive as a gray, papery blob rather than separate panes of waxy, bee-covered comb. The kids are diverse; Mr. Cardinal has tan skin and black hair.
A serviceable introduction to a hot topic. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0034-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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
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