A low-key but fervent appeal to care, framed by atmospheric art.
A polar bear has and then cares for two cubs in the rapidly melting Arctic.
Consciousness of climate change is woven throughout this snowy tale. “The ice broke up early again last spring—it always does now,” but a female bear has made her way over the floes to land, feasted on a drowned beluga whale with its tail tangled in a fishing net, dug a den in the snow, and settled down to sleep and wait out the winter. Emerging the following spring with two cubs in tow, she leads the way through unseasonable slush to the still-frozen sea to hunt for seals, and to teach her offspring how. But how will the bears survive, Jenkins asks, when the ice is gone? “I don’t think anybody knows.” In Baker-Smith’s impressionistic scenes, the mother bear, alone at first and then with her playful cubs, pads over dimly lit snowscapes past glimpses of open water loosely strewn with small bits of floating ice, pausing now and again to look out at viewers in silent enquiry. The author ends with further remarks about the causes of climate change and its effects on the bears’ habitat, then closes by urging readers to learn more about the issue and what they can do to help.
A low-key but fervent appeal to care, framed by atmospheric art. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781536235715
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Earnest and silly by turns, it doesn’t quite capture the attention or the imagination, although surely its heart is in the...
Rhymed couplets convey the story of a girl who likes to build things but is shy about it. Neither the poetry nor Rosie’s projects always work well.
Rosie picks up trash and oddments where she finds them, stashing them in her attic room to work on at night. Once, she made a hat for her favorite zookeeper uncle to keep pythons away, and he laughed so hard that she never made anything publicly again. But when her great-great-aunt Rose comes to visit and reminds Rosie of her own past building airplanes, she expresses her regret that she still has not had the chance to fly. Great-great-aunt Rose is visibly modeled on Rosie the Riveter, the iconic, red-bandanna–wearing poster woman from World War II. Rosie decides to build a flying machine and does so (it’s a heli-o-cheese-copter), but it fails. She’s just about to swear off making stuff forever when Aunt Rose congratulates her on her failure; now she can go on to try again. Rosie wears her hair swooped over one eye (just like great-great-aunt Rose), and other figures have exaggerated hairdos, tiny feet and elongated or greatly rounded bodies. The detritus of Rosie’s collections is fascinating, from broken dolls and stuffed animals to nails, tools, pencils, old lamps and possibly an erector set. And cheddar-cheese spray.
Earnest and silly by turns, it doesn’t quite capture the attention or the imagination, although surely its heart is in the right place. (historical note) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0845-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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