Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

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: *\*\*\

Poor Pluto, but lucky us

The Planet Hunter: The Story Behind What Happened to Pluto
by Elizabeth Rusch; illustrated by Guy Francis

Rising Moon

I boast a stargazer or two in my household. My son has rocket ship sheets on his bed, glowing stars on his wall and a real telescope my husband props on the balcony when they feel like braving the icy winds off Lake Michigan.

This book didn't last two seconds out of the package before both my little spaceman and my big one were hunched over it, reading, pointing and exclaiming. Something about the hubbub over Pluto really gets amateur astronomers going, and mine aren't the only ones.

In case you've been living on an asteroid, Pluto got bumped from the planet club last year after astronomers decided there were too many other Pluto-esque balls of ice and rock floating around the same neighborhood. It just wasn't special enough after all.

Nothing could make such a phenomenon hit closer than dramatizing it as a personal quest. Rusch cuts through the science and brings us a gripping, highly readable story of one persistent, likable young astronomer determined to find another planet in the Kuiper belt at the very fringes of the solar system.

We follow Mike Brown from his boyhood making moon craters in his muddy backyard to his adult years and the ingenious system he developed to detect new heavenly bodies using an old observatory telescope. How exciting to see his discoveries one by one, laid out in funny side notes that explain their names (he dubbed one "Santa" after the red-suited Christmas visitor) and some weird facts about them. We feel his excitement--and determination--build as he wonders what, exactly, he's stumbled upon.

There's no ending to spoil; Brown's adventures go on and on. Somewhere out there, peering into space, the man who forced a re-examining of certain celestial truths is still happily mapping his piece of heaven.

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: *\*\*\

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: *\*\

For your budding climatologist

Explore Winter!
and Explore Spring!
both by Maxine Anderson; illustrated by Alexis Frederick-Frost

Hmmm ... what to do with that greasy old pizza box from last night. Wall art? Nah. I got it ... attach some rubber bands and make snow shoes!

Okay, maybe that's not your idea of recycling, but it sounds pretty easy, as do most of the projects in these two books from Nomad Press, which publishes science-ey workbooks and build-it-yourself stuff -- not your average mass-market sticker books, to be sure.

The pages have the same texture as a coloring book, but use comic-strip panels for storytelling. They're also chock-a-block with facts and info-boxes on animal habitats, migration patterns, nesting habits, foraging, etc. Most looked simple, using stuff already cluttering your kitchen or family room, and could be done by a supervised five-year old or independent seven-to-nine year old.

I did have to scoff, though, at that whole make-a-snowflake-outta-coffee-filters activity we now know is obsolete. But that's just me.

I realize I'm a bit overdue on the Spring book, but not to worry. All these nifty experiments and factoids will be waiting for you in six months.

In the meantime, take your kids hiking through the woods and look for signs of chewed acorns or nibbled branches. Deer! How cool.

Rating: *\*\*\

A dolphin with a porpoise

Dizzy
by Stacy A. Nyikos; illustrated by Kary Lee

A few publishers have figured out my weakness for nature stories or those involving animals in their natural habitats. I've only ever lived in cities, where the wildlife happens indoors, and my natural habitat is pretty much confined to this desk. I enjoy a good jaunt outdoors if only vicariously via picture books.

One of the publishers I've adopted is Stonehorse, a newish upstart whose marine biology books blend scientific accuracy and captivating stories. Dizzy's the third effort for both publisher and author, which this time features a speedy, Pacific white-sided dolphin.

Not that I'd know any particular species of dolphin from a can of tuna, but Dizzy's a cheerful addition to the pantheon of loveable sea critters. If I'm reminded of the sharks in "Finding Nemo" who sneeringly dissed their cutesy rivals, it's only because middle age makes me cynical. I usually want to bite someone that smiley.

Fortunately, the whip-fast Dizzy gets a little less happy as he exhausts himself trying to catch up with a "fish herder" -- a sea lion who rounds up the catch of the day for the other carnivores. Along the way he learns a bit more about his friends' varied ocean habitats in cheery rhyming couplets.

This isn't one of those "and then evil humans messed everything up" story, so it feels almost a little too upbeat. A few toothy sharks would've helped. I might've liked to see Dizzy working at something more than his next meal, as Nyikos did so ably with an  earlier story about a small shark who saves the day from, well, evil humans.

Even so, kids love dolphins and we love kids, and books like this always whet the appetite for a trip to the aquarium. If you're in Chicago, catch Nyikos at the Shedd Aquarium's gift shop on May 26 from 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Rating: *\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Starstruck

Comets, Stars, The Moon and Mars
by Douglas Florian

I honestly don't know why the WaPo didn't love this book. Elizabeth Ward drubbed the verses as having "all the verve of a mnemonic." I disagree, and not just because the publisher mistakenly sent me three copies.

Check out the charming wordplay in Saturn, for example:

Saturn's rings turn round Saturn.
Its moons turn round it, too.
Saturn, by turns, turns round the sun
Saturning through and through.

And then there's this pithy summation of Pluto's woes:

Pluto was a planet.
Pluto was admired.
Pluto was a planet.
Till one day it got fired.

Mnemonic? Maybe, if in the sense it'll help fix the planets and other heavenly bodies more firmly in a child's memory. But aside from a few clunkers like the Uranus one Ward cites, most of this collection sparkles.

Florian avoids the kiddie poetry cliches that drive me nuts: he varies his meter and rhyme schemes, he fiddles and diddles with meanings, his images occasionally startle, and he's playful and witty at almost every turn, but gets his facts straight.

And the art! He primed brown paper bags (how's that for recycling?) and used great swashes of wet, drippy color, and then interspersed bits of paper and stamped letters, all tied together thematically to each poem. Check out the little cut-outs too, which open windows onto different pages.

But don't be fooled; these collages only look messy and spontaneous. It's all still uncluttered and carefully composed, and rife with visual puns and fun diversions, a perfect foil to his verses.

Take the Pluto poem again--our poor, demoted pal is stamped with letters spelling rock? hard place? dog? stone? ufo? oddball? etc. I found myself resisting the urge to utterly decimate his copyright and recreate the art as giant murals in my son's space-themed bedroom.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Pass the Peas!

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas
by Cheryl Bardoe; illustrations by Jos. A. Smith

Reviewed by Deb Clark

History does not have to be boring. This book is proof. Gregor Mendel’s life, including his groundbreaking scientific discovery of the theory of heredity, is rendered thoroughly understandable and interesting. Somebody go tell my high-school social studies teacher.

Commissioned by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to accompany an exhibit on Mendel that will wrap up at the end of this month, this book is the first by exhibition manager Cheryl Bardoe. Let’s hope she writes many more. This woman has a talent for telling a story.

The text is full of interesting details that humanize brilliant Mendel and pull the reader into his tale. We learn of young Gregor’s ironclad determination to learn, his willingness to forego half his meals to pay for his education, his decision to become a friar so he could continue his studies. Later, we’re told how the value of Mendel’s revolutionary findings was completely overlooked during his lifetime, and how the experience soured him on future scientific exploration.

The story really shines in its clear explanation of Mendel’s eight-year experiment planting peas that lead to his discovery of a fundamental aspect of genetic science: how traits are passed down through generations. Lovely and meticulous watercolor illustrations further enliven Mendel’s story and provide extra clarity to the scientific fine points.

I love to read this book to my children, but I also enjoy reading it myself.

Rating: *\*\*\*\