An ode to the dandelion, the familiar yellow weed that invades lawns and meadows, to the despair of gardeners.
Here the author celebrates the weed in the rhyming text, calling it "a noble breed" and stating: "In spring, dandelions bloom like gold stars in the grass, growing taller and taller as the warm days pass." Pictures and brief text then describe the dandelion from spring flowering, through the formation of fluffy white umbrellas with attached seeds, new seeds sprouting, and new flowers emerging. Paintings in soft yellow and green show enormously enlarged flowers and insects. In her debut, Posada gives the scientific name and brief facts about the dandelion; it is, for example, a composite flower, a perennial, a native of Europe and Asia, and a good source of vitamins A and C. She includes a recipe for a dandelion salad adding an appropriate warning to use only greens never sprayed or fertilized. She provides a page of things to do with dandelions to learn more about them, and suggests a title for further reading.
A good-natured read-aloud. (Nonfiction. 5-8)Pub Date: March 14, 2000
ISBN: 1-57505-383-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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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 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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