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GERTIE, THE DARLING DUCK OF WWII

Name: GERTIE, THE DARLING DUCK OF WWII
Author: Shari Swanson
ISBN: 9781534111714

by Shari Swanson ; illustrated by Renée Graef ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2023

Gertie’s heartwarming tale delights and distracts today as it did in 1945.

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War-worried Midwesterners rally round an imperiled fowl family.

By choosing to nest in an exceptionally risky public spot—far above the dirty Milwaukee River—darling Gertie offers a perfect distraction to humans in the last anxious days of World War II. Protective heroes—bridge tenders who rescue the mallard and her six cute ducklings in bad weather—ensure a happy ending: After a brief period on display in a department-store window, Gertie and her family are released into a nearby park. From the first high duck’s-eye view, we are drawn into her story through careful, sepia-toned illustrations that seem lifted out of an old scrapbook. Everyone dresses soberly; quotes from people are sourced. An occasional brown face can be seen in the crowds, but most are light-skinned. Varied perspectives, including close-ups of Gertie, atmospheric changing weather, and rich background details, pique interest. Strong backmatter, with archival photos, provides historical background, focusing first on the role of women and children in the war effort and then on the extraordinary efforts of Milwaukee officials and residents to save and celebrate Gertie and her offspring. Like Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings (1941), this is a nonanthropomorphized animal story featuring caring humans. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Gertie’s heartwarming tale delights and distracts today as it did in 1945. (Informational picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: March 15, 2023

ISBN: 9781534111714

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
HONEY, THE DOG WHO SAVED ABE LINCOLN
by Shari Swanson ; illustrated by Chuck Groenink

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BUTT OR FACE?

by Kari Lavelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2023

A gleeful game for budding naturalists.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
ODE TO GRAPEFRUIT
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Bryan Collier

- BOOK REVIEW
WE MOVE THE WORLD
by Kari Lavelle ; illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

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ANIMAL ARCHITECTS

From the Amazing Animals series

by Amy Cherrix ; illustrated by Chris Sasaki ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2021

An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort.

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A look at the unique ways that 11 globe-spanning animal species construct their homes.

Each creature garners two double-page spreads, which Cherrix enlivens with compelling and at-times jaw-dropping facts. The trapdoor spider constructs a hidden burrow door from spider silk. Sticky threads, fanning from the entrance, vibrate “like a silent doorbell” when walked upon by unwitting insect prey. Prairie dogs expertly dig communal burrows with designated chambers for “sleeping, eating, and pooping.” The largest recorded “town” occupied “25,000 miles and housed as many as 400 million prairie dogs!” Female ants are “industrious insects” who can remove more than a ton of dirt from their colony in a year. Cathedral termites use dirt and saliva to construct solar-cooled towers 30 feet high. Sasaki’s lively pictures borrow stylistically from the animal compendiums of mid-20th-century children’s lit; endpapers and display type elegantly suggest the blues of cyanotypes and architectural blueprints. Jarringly, the lead spread cheerfully extols the prowess of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, “the world’s largest living structure,” while ignoring its accelerating, human-abetted destruction. Calamitously, the honeybee hive is incorrectly depicted as a paper-wasps’ nest, and the text falsely states that chewed beeswax “hardens into glue to shape the hive.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An arguable error of omission and definite errors of commission sink this otherwise attractive effort. (selected sources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)