Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Mmmm ... berry tasty

Blackberry Banquet
by Terry Pierce; illustrated by Lisa Downey
Sylvan Dell

This snappy rhyming text has all the woodland animals zeroing in on a blackberry bush with its yummy, just-ripe treats. That is, until growly Bear turns up, sending them all scurrying in a farcical cascade of mishaps. But who will get the last berry--and the last laugh?

Pierce keeps the text light, with lots of appropriate onomatopoeia  for all  the animal noises when they're happily munching. Downey's lifelike art captures just a hint of whimsy in their gleeful gobbling. And, of course, there's more info on blackberries and their place in the "food web" and a yummy recipe for blackberry smoothie.

This is one of Sylvan Dell's better outings this season, with a more imaginative and sprightly treatment of a nature topic, but one that doesn't stray far from its factual basis.

Rating: *\*\*\

Nighty-night, li'l critters

Animals are Sleeping
by Susanne Slade; illustrated by Gary R. Phillips
Sylvan Dell Publishing

This short but sweet bedtime book sneaks in some lessons about animal habitats, showing polar bears, sloths, fish and other critters catching some zzzz's. Slade's simple verses aim for the preschool crowd with plenty of repetition and easy-breezy rhymes, and Phillips' lush illustrations almost glow, with touches of day-glo colors shimmering out amid the somnolent dark blues and greens.

The book's been vetted by a zoologist for accuracy, so there's no anthropomorphism or cutesy antics. The animals are shown as they would be in the wild. What I like is how it confers instant genius status on the reader, making you a hero to your kids, who have know way of knowing that you'd never seen a sloth sleeping, either.

The "For Creative Minds" exercises in the back reinforce lessons on what the pictured animals eat and where they sleep. But it's also fine for reading just before you tuck your human cub under the blankies too.

Rating: *\*\*\

Listen Up! Don't Miss This One

Listen, Listen
by Phillis Gershator; illustrated by Alison Jay
Barefoot Books

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Celebrate the seasons in style with Listen, Listen. This charmer of a picture book aimed at the two- to six-year-old reader makes you appreciate every quarter of the year, even depressing ol' winter. Listen, Listen has that one-two punch--a combination of snappy, lively text and intricate, nostalgic illustrations that will please the adult and the child reader.

Gershator's rhyming text is, simply, perfect. It scans and it sings as you travel through the year.  Here, for example, are the first four lines of the text:

Listen, listen...what's that sound? Insects singing all around!
Chirp, chrip, churr, churr, buzz, buzz, whirr, whirr.
Leaves rustle, hammocks sway. Splish, splash, children play.
Clouds drift, dogs run. Sizzle, sizzle, summer fun.

Go ahead.  Read it aloud.  I know you want to.

Alison Jay's detailed illustrations have an old-fashioned feel to them. They are presented as cracked oil paintings and feature old-fashioned school houses and animals like those you'd see in the work of Margaret Wise Brown.  Jay's color scheme is rich and warm--with dark reds and light blues and greens of every shade. The pages are so inviting, you want to fall into them and live in this peaceful world of seasonal activity and sound.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

GROSS-OUT WEEK Eensy-weensie arachnids

Spiders
Seymour Simon

Smithsonian/HarperCollins

"You may be surprised to learn just how fascinating [spiders] are."

Hey, Seymour, I'll take your word for it, okay? I mean, I've lived 44 years on this planet -- quite happily too -- without knowing a spider's body parts or that it's related to ticks, mites and scorpions. It's not like I go through my day thinking, "Wow, I wonder what it's like to have poison sacs on either side of my jaw!"

Okay, sometimes I do think that, but mostly in traffic.

This being strictly a science book, and from the Smithsonian at that, there's some uncomfortably close-up photos of our arachnid friends as they go about their bug-eating, web-weaving day. Some are pretty. Most would be much prettier if they masticated with their mouths closed.

Simon has a whole series of these nature books out, and they're staples of the young and science-report afflicted. They're the printed equivalent of broccoli, really.

Rating: *\*\

GROSS-OUT WEEK This book is really crap

Poop: A History of the Unmentionable
by Nicola Davies; illustrated by Neal Layton

Candlewick Press

Oh yeah, a POOP book. Kids won't like that, will they? I mean, it's only a wee-sized book about POOP, not anything designed to appeal to kids, whom we all know prefer to read about nice, clean subjects, like manners and respecting grown-ups and how not to insist in a whiny voice that you must read them a book about POOP right now, pleeeeez.

Ach. I'm disowning both of them.

Did you know that poop gets its nauseating hue from all the colors of our food blending in our intestines? See? An art lesson. And blue whales have pink poop. You can tell all about animals from their poop. F'rinstance, cute bunny wabbits EAT THEIR OWN POOP. Right out of their butts.

Oh yeah, kids will just hate this. And those scribbly, colorful drawings just like a kid would make? They'll hate that too.

In fact, between this and the parasite book, I predict Davies and Layton will have no sales whatsoever and be forced to take up a useful, productive hobby, like re-teaching my kids manners now that they ask for POOP at the dinner table. Gah.

Rating: *\*\*\

GROSS-OUT WEEK Don't bug me

What's Eating You? Parasites -- The Inside Story
by Nicola Davies; illustrated by Neal Layton

Candlewick Press

Ew! Ew! Ew! Need I say more? Ew!

I'm not showing this one to my kids. Nightmare time! At least for Mom.

In 60 stomach-churning pages, we learn all about the critters who make their home in fur, hair, tummies and, oh, gawd, I can't go on. Want to know the grossest? Me neither.

There are lots of, uh, fun facts on parasites of every size and disposition, from how they find their hosts to where they set up camp. I got a serious case of the ickies, and you will too, but there's some useful info on how to avoid them.

It's more of a novelty book, so it's compact and easily lost. Hooray. There's not much else to say. Just shudder, shut it, and tuck it under the rug for the fleas to find.

Rating: *\*\*\

Everybody wants some tail

Little Skink's Tail
by Janet Halfmann; illustrated by Laurie Allen Klein

Sylvan Dell Publishing

A skink's a type of lizard with a dazzling cobalt tail, which the poor critter loses in a fight with a crow. While this saves her life, it leaves her unadorned. While she's waiting for it to grow back, she imagines herself with tails from other forest animals.

A squirrel's tail is too bushy, nor does a porcupine's please. And feathers? Still no.

Halfmann really runs with this idea, keeping the storyline simple but upping the ante as Skink considers the different appendages. Even kids unfamiliar with most of these animals will get the humor in Skink's good-natured tail shopping.

Klein's watercolors are lifelike, the better to educate, and exercises in the back enhance our foray into Skink's forest. Like If a Dolphin Were a Fish, (also by this illustrator) it's a fanciful way of teaching what an animal is by demonstrating what it isn't -- which uses fairy-tale transformation to impart factual information.

Rating: *\*\*\

Crystal clear

Julie the Rockhound
by Gail Langer Karwosky; illustrated by Lisa Downey

How do you make rocks as interesting as, say, fuzzy bunnies or roaring dinosaurs? They don't do much, just lie around and wait for you to dig them up.

When Julie stumbles on a quartz crystal, she doesn't know what to make of it. Her Dad supplies all the answers as she asks and asks about where they come from, confusing "quartz" with "quarts" and a vein of rocks for the ones in her arm, etc.

Julie's merely a vehicle for dispensing information, and the plot plods wearily from fact to fact. It's a shame, because I know a few real rockhounds. My mother had a crystal she used for healing, and my mother-in-law goes to rock shows in Arizona.

Rockhounds are a quirky, self-effacing group -- often outdoorsy or New Age-y, and cheerfully aware that the rest of the world thinks entire boulders are banging around between their ears. More could've been done with either Julie's or her father's personalities to match the audacious and memorable folks I associate with this particular obsession.

I might also have liked to know where Julie lived. It's not as if someone in the Chicago suburbs could expect to find a vein of crystals in her backyard.

Exercises and end notes fill in some fascinating information, as is true with all Sylvan Dell titles, but I kept wondering if perhaps the author could've drawn more on her own life, as she described on the back flap. She's hiked petrified wood forests and dug into turquoise deposits in the Southwest -- both are fascinating enough settings for a child's adventure.

There, that's the word I was looking for: setting. Something Julie lacks. And without that context and an adventure to hang it on, the story crumbles like shale underfoot.

Rating: *\*\

Plant a Seed

Little Apple Goat
by Carolin Jayne Church

Reviewed by Kelly Herold

Where do orchards come from?  And what happens when an orchard dies?

Church's sunny, charming Little Apple Goat tells this tale from Little Goat's perspective.  She's interested in orchards, you see, because she's an unusual goat: "While most goats are happy to chew on last week's leftovers, or Wednesday's washing, Little Apple Goat preferred...apples...and pears...and cherries."

Little Goat eats the fruit and spits the pits and seeds over the hedge.  When a windstorm destroys the orchard at Little Goat's farm, Little Goat is distraught.  Fortunately, her eating habits from the past have unexpected (to the goat and the child reader) results.

Little Apple Goat celebrates the benefits we sometimes reap in just doing the things we love, simple as they may be. Church's colorful illustrations support this cheerful tale with animals who are cute, but not too cute. And it's important that the animals don't steal the show, because it is nature who is the real star of Little Apple Goat.  Nature with its wind, its beautiful trees, its restorative spring, and, most of all, its gorgeous orchards.

Little Apple Goat is best suited for children ages three to seven.  Enjoy as part of a nature or spring unit or on its own.

Rating: *\*\*\

Walk a mile in another's paws

Tracks of a Panda
by Nick Dowson; illustrated by Yu Rong

Candlewick Press

Like Chinese poetry, this narrative is lean and flowing, celebrating nature by immersing us in it. Though not technically a poem, the text has that same rhythmic feel of translated Chinese verse, and even mimics its minimalist descriptions and solemn tone.

It's told in the present tense as if unfolding right now, from the mother panda's perspective but without anthropomorphizing. Dowson takes us through birth and the first year, as seasons change, food becomes scarce and the mother's strength falters. Predators and humans encroach, and there's the never-ceasing need to suckle even when she's exhausted and starved.

Nope, you don't get a sentimentalized, Disney-fied version of a dancing Mama bear and her goofy cub played by a hyper-caffeinated Robin Williams. Nature is tough, but  wondrous, if you know how to appreciate it.

This is a book for a quiet evening, one free of distractions, when curious eyes can marvel at the soothing, monochromatic watercolors with the occasional splash of fleshy pink or spring green. Rong grew up near the mountains that are home to dwindling panda populations and captures their habitat with a few easy strokes of a calligraphy brush.

Factoids on pandas are dropped onto every spread to satisfy your little must-know-it-all. Pair this book with Fox for a similar venture into the forest.

Rating: *\*\*\*\