A promising debut spoiled by a design issue and cultural insensitivity.
Creatively stylized images of flora and fauna native to some 15 deserts around the world.
Interspersing her examination with closer looks at camels and at sand dunes, the bird communities associated with acacia trees, and like intriguing sidelights, Tzomaka poses groups of select residents from all three types of desert (hot, cold, and coastal) against sere backdrops, with pithily informative comments on characteristic behaviors and survival strategies. But significant bits of her presentation are only semilegible, with black type placed on deep blue or purple backgrounds. And rarely (if ever) have desert animals looked so…floral. Along with opting for a palette of bright pinks, greens, and purples rather than natural hues for her flat, screen-print–style figures, Tzomaka decorates them with contrasting whirls of petals and twining flourishes, stars, scallops, pinwheels, and geometric lines or tessellations. Striking though these fancies are, artistic license has led her into some serious overgeneralizations, as she claims to be drawing on regional folk motifs for inspiration—justifying the ornate ruffs and borders on creatures of the Kalahari with a vague note that “African tribes make accessories and jewelry…decorated with repeated lines, circles and dots,” for instance, and identifying a Northwest Coastal pattern on an arctic fox as “Inuit.” Readers may find less shifty footing in more conventional outings like Jim Arnosky’s Watching Desert Wildlife (1998).
A promising debut spoiled by a design issue and cultural insensitivity. (map, index) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-500-65198-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Considering the flotilla of more watertight treatments available, a washout.
A dip into the diverse bodies of water on our planet and some of the ways we interact with them.
Like water itself, this survey doesn’t take any particular shape. Illustrated with large photos in which the author digitally inserts small cartoon animals and items, single-topic spreads are arranged in seemingly arbitrary order. They offer brief overviews of the water cycle; fresh, salt, and brackish waters and their natural residents; oceans; select seas, lakes, canals, and waterfalls; rivers both major (the Amazon, the Nile) and not so much (the Brooks River in Alaska); “Famous Places” such as Venice and Yellowstone National Park; the “floating market” of Bangkok; and other subjects before suddenly running aground on the southern coast of Australia. Each topic concludes with a cartoon and a question (“Which dam is a little too low?” “Which rabbit is surprised by the geyser?”) that playfully test comprehension, but the one activity, a perfunctory suggestion to fill a bucket with seawater then wait for the water to evaporate, is no more feasible than the ensuing claim that the residue will be “the same salt that you have in the kitchen cupboard!” is accurate.
Considering the flotilla of more watertight treatments available, a washout. (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60537-354-6
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Clavis
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“Humans are lucky to have rodents,” Munro argues…and makes her case with equal warmth to hearts and minds.
Twenty-one representatives of the largest mammalian order pose in this fetching portrait gallery.
Each one depicted, all or in part, at actual size, the rodentine array begins with a pocket-watch–size African pygmy jerboa and concludes with the largest member of the clan, the “sweet-looking capybara.” In between, specimens climb the scale past chipmunks and northern flying squirrels to a Norway rat, porcupine, and groundhog. Despite a few outliers such as the naked mole rat and a rather aggressive-looking beaver, Munro’s animals—particularly her impossibly cute guinea pig—strongly exude shaggy, button-eyed appeal. Her subjects may come across as eye candy, but they are drawn with naturalistic exactitude, and in her accompanying descriptive comments, she often relates certain visible features to distinctive habitats and behaviors. She also has a terrific feel for the memorable fact: naked mole rats run as quickly backward in their tunnels as forward; African giant pouched rats have been trained to sniff out mines; the house mouse “is a romantic. A male mouse will sing squeaky love songs to his girlfriend” (that are, fortunately or otherwise, too high for humans to hear). Closing summaries will serve budding naturalists in need of further specifics about sizes, diets, geographical ranges, and the like.
“Humans are lucky to have rodents,” Munro argues…and makes her case with equal warmth to hearts and minds. (websites, index) (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3860-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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