Bee-guiling and informative.
Honeybees get most of the attention but make up only a small fraction of the number of bee species on our planet; a salute to the rest is in order.
Going all in on reader appeal, Vermond profiles a representative sampling of carpenter bees, sweat bees, diggers, and other “gentle little fuzz-buckets” classed as “wild solitary bees,” which never swarm, rarely sting, and actually constitute 90% of all the bees on Earth. As she writes, they are the main pollinators for many common foodstuffs from blueberries to potatoes and tomatoes. Some collect flower oils rather than pollen, produce a cellophane-like protective coating for their nests, and exhibit other unexpected behaviors; vulture bees even eat carrion and regurgitate it later to feed their offspring. “What’s the only real difference between this stuff and the honey of a honeybee? It’s made of rotten flesh, not plants,” writes Vermond. Steube’s close-up, detailed portraits of a representative dozen or so types of wild bees hovering over a variety of flowers offer a good sense of the industrious clan’s broad range of both common and distinctive features. Bee predators and parasites, like the “adorable” bee flies that bomb nests with their own eggs, also earn nods, and closing projects and practices invite concerned young activists to “BEE part of the solution" to declining insect populations.
Bee-guiling and informative. (glossary, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781771476171
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Another playful imagination-stretcher.
Markle invites children to picture themselves living in the homes of 11 wild animals.
As in previous entries in the series, McWilliam’s illustrations of a diverse cast of young people fancifully imitating wild creatures are paired with close-up photos of each animal in a like natural setting. The left side of one spread includes a photo of a black bear nestling in a cozy winter den, while the right side features an image of a human one cuddled up with a bear. On another spread, opposite a photo of honeybees tending to newly hatched offspring, a human “larva” lounges at ease in a honeycomb cell, game controller in hand, as insect attendants dish up goodies. A child with an eye patch reclines on an orb weaver spider’s web, while another wearing a head scarf constructs a castle in a subterranean chamber with help from mound-building termites. Markle adds simple remarks about each type of den, nest, or burrow and basic facts about its typical residents, then closes with a reassuring reminder to readers that they don’t have to live as animals do, because they will “always live where people live.” A select gallery of traditional homes, from igloo and yurt to mudhif, follows a final view of the young cast waving from a variety of differently styled windows.
Another playful imagination-stretcher. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781339049052
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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