This is a book to closely pore over—perhaps before a trip to the park or a botanical garden for real-life practice.
The unique shapes and patterns of 17 exotic and common flowers are exhibited in this optically striking display that points to the plants’ visual similarities to other objects, animals, or people.
Aided by melodic rhyming verse, large, boldly colored acrylic paintings reveal the ways the flowers mimic something else. “Flowers in shapes that surprise and delight. // Upside down pants, / a parrot in flight. // Prim ballerinas, / wild baboons. // Snakes standing guard, // and spiraling spoons.” A first look through the artwork will bring recognition for some of the comparisons, but the patterned arrangements and varying perspectives will invite re-examination to catch them all. The significant backmatter supplements the art with crisp close-up color photographs of each flower coupled with its common and scientific names, area of origin, and pollinators. It will crystallize the painted images for readers as they revisit the paintings and realize the associations, which are often reflected in the flower’s common names. For example “Bumblebees laughing” glosses the bumblebee orchid, while Australia’s red spider flower is represented as “skittering spiders.” This should encourage older preschoolers and early elementary children to look closely at nature’s wonders in the garden for their own comparisons.
This is a book to closely pore over—perhaps before a trip to the park or a botanical garden for real-life practice. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-56145-952-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid, small step for diversifying STEM stories.
What does Annie want to be?
As career day approaches, Annie wants to keep her job choice secret until her family sees her presentation at school. Readers will figure it out, however, through the title and clues Tadgell incorporates into the illustrations. Family members make guesses about her ambitions that are tied to their own passions, although her brother watches as she completes her costume in a bedroom with a Mae Jemison poster, starry décor, and a telescope. There’s a celebratory mood at the culminating presentation, where Annie says she wants to “soar high through the air” like her basketball-playing mother, “explore faraway places” like her hiker dad, and “be brave and bold” like her baker grandmother (this feels forced, but oven mitts are part of her astronaut costume) so “the whole world will hear my exciting stories” like her reporter grandfather. Annie jumps off a chair to “BLAST OFF” in a small illustration superimposed on a larger picture depicting her floating in space with a reddish ground below. It’s unclear if Annie imagines this scene or if it’s her future-self exploring Mars, but either scenario fits the aspirational story. Backmatter provides further reading suggestions and information about the moon and four women astronauts, one of whom is Jemison. Annie and her family are all black.
A solid, small step for diversifying STEM stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-88448-523-0
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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