A sturdy and versatile curriculum companion
This square-format book consists of 13 spreads, each with a full-page close-up photograph of a common American species of bird.
These include the American robin, blue jay, Carolina chickadee, ruby-throated hummingbird, downy woodpecker, Northern mockingbird, red-winged blackbird, Eastern bluebird, brown pelican, great horned owl, American crow, Canada goose, and Northern cardinal. Each photo is annotated with factual labels in a cursive typeface and a salient fact about each species (did you know that the American robin is one of a few bird species that can both walk and hop?). The left page of each spread contains an original poem about the bird, along with a paragraph describing a scientific or historical aspect of the species. The last three pages contain “Story Stretchers”: extension activities in art, science, math, and music, which expand and develop the concepts expressed in the spreads, such as the different qualities of bird song, how hummingbirds move, and the rhythm of woodpeckers’ drumming. Although the book is stronger in math and science concepts than the arts––the quality of the poetry is uneven––the approach is consistent with the current educational trend toward fostering cross-disciplinary understanding of topics and will be useful for home-schooled children or as supplements to the elementary school curriculum. Butterflies, which publishes simultaneously, follows a similar format.
A sturdy and versatile curriculum companion . (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4867-1320-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flowerpot Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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