Timely intervention keeps a young science enthusiast’s career ambitions on the rails in this fourth outing for Mr. Tiffin’s class.
A born naturalist (“She even collected owl pellets. And she took them apart”), Kimmy eagerly shares her knowledge about dinosaurs and fossils on a trip to the museum—until she’s silenced by classmate Jake’s disparaging remark that “girls aren’t scientists.” No sooner does her perspicacious teacher spot her sudden change, though, than he leads her to a specimen of Gasparinisauria, a dinosaur named, she reads, in honor of paleontologist Zulma Nélida Brandoni de Gasparini. Even Jake admits that that is “awesome,” and for the rest of the visit Kimmy becomes a positive fount of information about raptor toes, Stegosaurus brains, and other dinosaur lore. “When I grow up,” Kimmy declares, “I want to be just like her.” Mr. Tiffin’s “I think you already are,” cements the teachable moment. Kimmy, her teacher, and Jake are white, but along with capturing his characters’ changing moods and responses with artfully angled faces and other body language, Karas portrays the rest of the class with diverse features and skin tones. A gallery of women paleontologists of the past and present makes an apt closer.
A pivotal moment in a child’s life, handled with grace and sensitivity rather than conflict or ineffective lecturing. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-51143-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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BOOK REVIEW
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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