This winsomely illustrated exploration of maps is the perfect entry to understanding—and embracing—cartography.
Despite computer-dictated directions everywhere, there’s still a place for physical maps.
This delightful work starts by depicting the small house where light-skinned Anna lives and the six-story apartment building where brown-skinned Zane waves from his balcony. Along with an invitation, Zane has sent Anna a map, irritating the girl because her house is relegated to the edge. Light-skinned Dad, down on the floor with Anna, urges her to make her own map, which she does. Hers is very large—but still too small to include Grandma’s house, prompting Dad to introduce the concepts of bird’s-eye perspective and scale. Anna still prefers her map. She then makes quite a different map for her cat Whiskers’ favorite places, and Dad branches out to make another kind of map: a family tree. Finally, Zane’s map guides Anna as she and Dad walk to Zane’s house. The two final pages offer suggestions for maps readers might want to draw. Engagingly naïve but legible illustrations of the children’s efforts meld beautifully with Huang’s simple but expert watercolors. Readers will enjoy tracking the appearances of adored, snub-nosed Whiskers. Throughout, the warm connection between Dad and daughter comes through clearly. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This winsomely illustrated exploration of maps is the perfect entry to understanding—and embracing—cartography. (index) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5362-2511-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Nevertheless, if strictly factual representation of the actual construction process isn’t important, the hard-hatted action...
As this book opens, a construction worker gears up to start her day.
She and her crew operate heavy equipment, jackhammers, and other power tools as they build a skyscraper. The hubbub on the site is broken down into rhyming units of activity with a “House That Jack Built” beat: “This is the scaffold / that reaches the sky. / This is the clang / and the bang / and the cry—.” At the end of the productive day, the tired workers jump into their crew-cab pickup and carpool home. Unfortunately, Godwin’s verses waver from snappy to tongue-tripping: “This is the grind of the gears / and the smell of the diesel and oil. / These are the shouts and the cheers. / This is the sound of the toil.” Hector’s illustrations depict a diverse crew (the protagonist has brown skin and fluffy black hair) and showcase enough heavy equipment to give young construction buffs a charge. However, his details are at odds with reality. The story opens with the first four floors of a high-rise in progress, but at the end of the day there are 19 stories! One scene shows workers hammering nails into what appear to be steel vertical beams—a miracle if they succeed. The building is slowly going up, but a worker is inexplicably using a jackhammer on one of the newly poured slabs.
Nevertheless, if strictly factual representation of the actual construction process isn’t important, the hard-hatted action should please aficionados. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-368-01817-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There may be an audience for this—but not in any library, classroom, group, or, particularly considering the pointy piece,...
A very simple guide to (some) human anatomy, with scratch-off patches.
On sturdy board pages two cartoon children—one brown, one a sunburned pink—pose for cutaway views of select anatomical features. In most images certain parts, such as lungs and bladder on the “Organs” spread and both gluteus maximi on “Muscles,” are hidden beneath a black layer that can be removed with the flat end (or more slowly with the pointed one) of a wooden stylus housed in an attached bubble pack. With notable lack of consistency, the names of select organs or areas, with such child-centric additions as “A cut,” or “Poop,” are gathered in bulleted lists and/or placed as labels for arbitrarily chosen items in the pictures. It’s hard to envision younger readers getting more than momentary satisfaction from this, as they industriously scrape away and are invited to learn terms such as “Alveoli” and “Latissimus dorsi” that are, at best, minimally defined or described. Older ones in search of at least marginally systematic versions of the skeletal, sensory, nervous, and other (but not reproductive) systems will be even less satisfied. Even those alive to the extracurricular possibilities of a volume that contains, as one of the two warnings on the rear cover notes, a “functional sharp point,” will be disappointed.
There may be an audience for this—but not in any library, classroom, group, or, particularly considering the pointy piece, preschool setting. (Informational novelty. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78603-323-9
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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