HELLO, SPRING: Explore Super Plants and Tiny Champions!

 If you happen to live in a part of the country that experiences four seasons, especially here in the northern hemisphere with spring peeking around the corner with more sunshine and enticing bright afternoons, these two nonfiction picture books will be especially welcome on wish lists and library holds. Both invite fresh and awe-inspiring looks at the plants and animals of our world that deserve to be showcased and studied. 

PHAIDON, 2025

Let's begin with SUPER POWERED PLANTS: Meet the Smartest, Strongest, and Sneakiest Plants,  written by Soledad Romero Mariño and illustrated by Sonia Pulido. This is one of several releases by a publisher with a well-earned reputation for offering young readers appealing resources to learn more about the world.  

In this case the plants featured reside in habitats around the world, and are distinctly super-powered in multiple ways. The result is a collection of double-page spreads that are similarly organized but produce some jaw-dropping content through a blend of well-written text and symbols/icons that reveal particular adaptive patterns to support long-term survival. 

Illustrator Pulido has a crisp, colorful style that lends appeal and draws attention to each element of a plant, making the complex content accessible and easily comparable to other plants. 

End papers provide an array of the symbolic circles used throughout to tag the traits (each of which is explained on an opening spread) The graphic design of the overall presentation invites reading about one after the next, but also makes this an effective research source. It encourages readers to use the patterns of resource texts (table of contents, tagged details, scientific analysis insertions in smaller print) and the vivid, accurately depicted aspects of each plant in scientific illustrations worthy of framing.

Interior/endpapers, array of icons. Phaeton, 2025

The "super" elements of each plant, in various combinations, range from specialization of the bark, to longevity, to super-flower traits, to sensitivity/reactivity, and more. The compact and readable text explains how such advantages serve the particular plant species and combine with the other super qualities to make the plants exceptional. It's intriguing and exciting to read about, some examples being familiar to a degree and others being new introductions to various readers. Allowing for surviving (and thriving) across the globe and in wide-ranging biomes (deserts to rain forests to water homes), these highly specialized plant lead readers on a virtual tour of the world and invite them to find and learn more about extra special, super-powered plants!

Nature's Tiny Champions, Phaidon, 2025

NATURE'S TINY CHAMPIONS: The Big Book of Little Creatures Doing Mighty Things is written by Ben Lerwill and illustrated by Nic Jones. This nonfiction celebration and revelation of some of Earth's tiniest creatures is super-sized to allow for shared experiences with the exciting content. Each creature presented is showcased at actual size (with measurements, such as the 0.04 inch waterbear, about as small as the period at the end of sentence), with an expanded and detailed view of the critter beneath that "actual size" image, when needed. The images provide clear understanding of each animal and its interaction with nature, as well as a side-border offering circular illustration insets and brief text to learn even more. 

In selecting the creatures to celebrate, the choices showcase familiar animals like honeybees, but layer in facts that are likely new to the reader. Other choices are creatures that young and old are less likely to have heard of before. All in all, this oversized, well-organized compendium of small creatures with big impacts on the earth provides vibrant and informative visuals with intriguing and beguiling information. They make a delightful pair of titles for gifting, and will enhance any classroom, library, or home collection. 

Phaidon Press, Inc has produced other nonfiction books I've throughly admired and written about HERE and  HERE,  From Bansky to Board Books to Bees, each topic is presented in kid-friendly ways that don't talk-down to children but instead engage their interest and entice further explorations. 

MAKING MORE- How Life Begins: A Masterpiece from Katherine Roy

In case you haven't noticed, I read MANY picture books across many styles, topics, intended audiences, and formats. Here's is one that took me by surprise with its scope, beauty, and content, a triumph of story, images, and language. 

Norton Young Readers, 2023

MAKING MORE: How Life Begins is entirely the creation of Katherine Roy. and it's all about creation. As the tag line on her website states, and perfectly describes the unforgettable books Roy has created to date:

Creating beautiful, science-based books that tell the story of the natural world.

I've read and thoroughly enjoyed her prior titles. (Click her name above to see them featured on her website.) In the case of this latest release, Roy has taken on a topic immensely broader than her prior titles, as expansive and comprehensive as those other very special titles were: stars, Mars, sharks, elephants, and ocean depths.

In this case, She addresses the ways in which life reproduces itself. That, in fact, has always been the definition of life:  from microscopic plants and creature to ourselves. An essential element in any definition of life is its capacity to reproduce themselves.

The visual narrative that ties these portrayals together involves an obviously pregnant woman, an apparently male partner, a young boy, and their dog. The opening spread states her case clearly with a familiar robin on center-right stage, bill grasping grass tufts to prepare a nest. Directly from that page is more memorable and important text, which I'll refer to again as I conclude. 

"Everywhere, all around you, life is making more. Mammals and insects. Trees and flowers.Fish and frogs. Like food and water, like oxygen and sunlight, reproduction is essential for our Earth."

The page turn extends this universal truth about the most frequently observed reproduction pattern:

"Meet, merge, and create something NEW."

The family explores and observes within a wild habitat that appears to be temperate northern hemisphere but with truths that apply across the globe.

After that gloriously powerful launch, Roy moves to more  detailed text and images that  address genes, DNA, cells, gametes and scientific side notes and images with accurate labels to help  make sense of the more complex expository text. Even so, the natural scenes on facing pages invite even the youngest to pay rapt attention to a reading, even if the content is more environmentally advanced that they are ready to fully absorb. Even someone (like me), someone who has seen such creatures and settings in real life and in a variety of images, can  find curiosity rising and questions propelling us onward.

Roy demonstrates mastery of  scope, too, not just related to species variations. This content explores the HOW, but not limited to mechanics at the observable or cellular level, ways the merging is supported by sound, sight, and other signals to connect the matching living things in the area. it also notes ways in which chance plays an incredible role, including external fertilization and internal mating. Exceptional cases are also addressed, like bees and other insects pollinating plants, though some plants like ferns reproduce without requiring others of their own kind or pollination to generating MORE life.

Roy's illustrations are a masterful mix of being beautifully expressive and accurately drawn, labeled, and painted with color and other details that make this a picture book that might well supplement understanding among advanced science studies. Even the topic of crossing between/among species of many living things plays a role in the important truth that CHANGE is another essential aspect of Earth's survival. The concluding art spread opens into a double-wide gatefold of celebration of new life, one that carries that visual narrative of the single family into a social event representing a wider community. Readers could spend long minutes savoring and investigating. 

Back matter is an effective resource for parent/teacher/librarian readers and also for young readers who have reached a developmental stage of readiness for study and discussion of the details of this subject matter. The KEY TERMS glossary is thorough and helpful, with species listed in the order in which they appear, using common names and scientific ones. I especially appreciate this approach  (as opposed to noting those  in smaller font on each page as they occur) because the technically-detailed pages are able to remain the focus of the book. A "backyard" note indicates that Roy chose to identify and investigate living things in her own proximity. She issues a direct invitation to explore near home with suggestions to readers of places they might be on any given day in their own lives, and things to look for. A full page of small-font text describes/explains very effectively what is happening at a cellular level during MEIOSIS, with easy to follow (and notated) illustrations of each step in the process. Don't miss the author note that follows all this. it is like having Roy as as guest in your home/mind!

Even if scientific and other nonfiction topics are not your favorite types of picture books (which is hard to imagine, but can be true!) please take a close look at this one. Once you do, I'm guessing you will track down all the other picture books by this impressive creator/scientist.  I'm for one, mama eager to see MORE picture books emerging from her talent and knowledge.

As mentioned in opening lines above, I want to return that opening text in the book, these words:

"Everywhere, all around you, life is making more. Mammals and insects. Trees and flowers.Fish and frogs. Like food and water, like oxygen and sunlight, reproduction is essential for our Earth."

My eagerness for you (any and all of you reading this) to find, read, and consider the value of this book is based on its own merits. Beyond that, I am actively urging you to learn about it and talk about it. This hinges on the current political movement (by a a loud and powerful, but small contingent of activists) to remove many books from public access. This could become a prime candidate for such censorship. There is nothing graphic or shocking in this offering, but the very topic seems to be beyond rigid and arbitrary "standards", offending efforts to deny science and information to those outside their personal purview. If you check this out and believe it belongs in schools and libraries and homes, please speak up-- among your friends, to your librarians, and in public settings. Thank you.

DIG, DANCE, DIVE: How Birds Move to Survive! Another Cybils Nominee

 The clock is ticking. Our Round One Cybils Awards panelists for 2022 NONFICTION are faced with narrowing the nominees to just a few finalists. After that, a new panel of judges will take on the challenging task of naming a single title among each category: elementary, middle grade, and high school. I do not envy them their assignment. 

My struggles to determine which titles belong on that short list are eased by some amazing discussions with the other panelists. And I'm lucky to have readers through this platform so I can describe and recommend far more than a few of the nominees in the picture book category. (I also review and comment on the older-reader categories in my Goodreads account, in case you are interested). 

OWLKIDS BOOKS, 2022

So, without any indicators about which titles might be inching forward to that short list for elementary titles, I'm accelerating my looks at some of my MANY favorites, just in time for holiday gifting and book ordering in school and library budgets. 

My last post featured ON A GOLD-BLOOMING DAY, here, and it definitely deserves your attention for its visual glory as well as its word mastery. Another picture book among the nominees that involves nature, superb language, and visual appeal is DIG, DANCE, DIVE: How Birds Move to Survive. It's written by Etta Kaner and illustrated by June Steube. The language in this delightfully informative book about bird adaptations is playful but precise. Each critter is introduced with a few lively words in oversized font, followed by a short passage with science-accurate descriptions of how the introductory phrase applies. 

This example involves penguins.

"BIRDS TOBOGGAN."

 In just a few following sentences in standard font, readers then learn about what it takes to safely and effectively conserve energy and yet escape or travel large spaces without harming penguin feathers. The appealing and reader-focused eyes are enhanced by the illustrator's placement of birds in dramatic perspectives, action-packed scenes, and creative clusters, but ones that are consistent with actual behaviors of that species. A final double spread offers quick notes about other birds and their surprising behavior patterns and adaptations that increase survival. 

This is a thoroughly scientific/nonfiction title for young audiences, yet it abounds with humor, surprise, and curiosity-provoking content that are likely to develop more attentive observation of birds among those same young ones. If you are new to this blog you won't know that I am an avowed bird-lover, wowed by their intelligence, variety, beauty and behaviors. Even so, I feel safe is assuring readers that such a preset is not required to fall in love with this book and the birds within its pages. 

What are you waiting for?

A PEEK AT BEAKS: Remarkable Birds!

 I am a pushover for birds of any kind, and I treasure the years in which I was able to care for injured or abandoned birds as a licensed rehabilitator. I've always found them to be some of the most elegant, beautiful, and remarkable creatures on earth, which is saying a lot. Holding various birds in my own hands made me intimately aware of the facility and genius of their body designs and functions. Especially beaks. 

When a bobble-headed, featherless, newly-hatched bird arrives needing help to survive, the wrong care or feeding could end their lives, and yet they have very few identifiable attributes that will soon become visible. Those instinctively gaping beaks, their colorful open maws, and even their distinctive calls for food in those first hours and days provided critical information about what and how to feed them. So I'll add to this text that beak traits are also tools for survival in those earliest days.

Species identifiable traits will develop, as birds do, in a blink of time: growing feathers, becoming able to feed themselves, and (again instinctively) using those beaks in ways they were designed (by each species' adaptations) to do. 

MIllbrook Press, 2021

A PEEK AT BEAKS: Tools Birds Use, written by Sara Levine and illustrated by Kate Slater, is a colorful, delightful, curiosity-compelled picture book that will be loved by kids of many ages and by the adults who share them. Both creators appear to have a similar fascination with birds to my own. That's important, because the accuracy in the science (biology, anatomy, environment, etc.) for each bird in each category resonates with accuracy and informative content, but the tone of language and images make those examples feel as appealing as they are intriguing. 

Two elements of this book especially struck me as super-smart: 

The title page launches readers with precise illustrations of the tools that will be described and compared to birds throughout the book. It's a helpful approach, since many young readers may not be familiar with each of these common tools.

One page turn from that title page asks a very important question: "Have you ever imagined you were a bird?" It is beyond my brain to picture a single child (who has ever seen a bird) who would not have imagined themselves within that identity at some point or another. The pattern that then follows provides the premise (that bird beaks serve as useful tools that help birds survive and thrive), framing a silhouette of a bird seemingly using a version of the "tool" being compared.

Each comparison describes a single featured example, plus several more as "supporting cast" in secondary appearances within the illustrations. The closing has a fun participatory prompt. Brief backmatter offers a simple example/explanation about adaptive evolution and shifts over time among various bird species and the ways their "tools" have changed to suit their habitats.The further reading list is welcome and helpful, too, especially for those whose imaginations switch into overdrive!

This is a sure winner for families, classrooms, science study, and mentor text in compare/contrast science reporting. For anyone seeking more suggested titles, just type "birds" into the search box in that menu to the right >>>> and find many other picture books on this topic across all ages. Don't say I didn't warn you that I am a pushover for BIRDS!