Review of In the World of Whales, by Michelle Cuslito, illustrated by Jessica Lanan

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

In the World of Whales

by Michelle Cusolito
illustrated by Jessica Lanan

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2025. 44 pages.
Review written November 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This stunningly beautiful picture book tells the true story of a free diver who encountered a pod of sperm whales surrounding a just-born baby whale calf with the umbilical cord still attached.

The story is told poetically, with both the diver and the calf having to go to the surface for air periodically.

The whales peer at the man
with egg-shaped eyes the size of tangerines.
Their school-bus-big bodies
with rumpled backs
and bulbous heads
could crush the man in a flash.
Wild animals protect their young.
Is he in danger?

On the next spread, he copies the whales’ movements to be non-threatening, and more whales arrive to the group. Then, after he and the calf breathe:

The mother nudges her offspring toward the newcomers.
One by one,
she introduces the baby to the community.

The man watches in wonder, and hears the clicks of the whales communicating with one another, including the newborn.

It all builds to a doubled-spread with pages that fold out.

Then, the mother nudges the calf toward the man.
She presents her wrinkly baby as if to say,
“Meet the newest member of our family.”

Six pages at the back tell more about sperm whales, more about free diving, and provide resources including this page of photos from the actual encounter in 2014, and this amazing video of the encounter.

The book captures the magic and wonder of the moment, and leaves you, like the original diver, in awe.

michellecusolito.com
jessicalanan.com
HolidayHouse.com

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Review of Butt or Face? Super Gross Butts, by Kari Lavelle

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Butt or Face?

Super Gross Butts

by Kari Lavelle

Sourcebooks Explore, 2025. 36 pages.
Review written November 17, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Kari Lavelle has got a good thing going, and I’m glad she’s not stopping. And I can’t seem to stop reviewing them. The fact is, you’ve already got ingredients that add up to a huge hit with kids for librarians book talking:

— The word “Butt”
— A simple interactive quiz where kids can shout out the answer (Bonus: One possible answer is “Butt”!)
— Photographs of animals
— Intriguing animal facts about unusual animals

And with this third book in the series, she’s added one more sure winner:

— Many of those facts about animals are super gross.

Some examples are the greater short-horned lizard that squirts blood from its eyes, the silver-spotted skipper caterpillar that catapults its excrement at predators, and the tortoise beetle larva that makes armor out of poop.

The format is the same as the earlier books: Show a close-up picture of part of an animal. Then ask: Is it a BUTT or a FACE? Turn the page to see the full picture of the animal and the answer to the question. There are additional text boxes on the picture headlined “Face the Facts” or “Beyond the Backside.” A chart and map at the back shows where each animal comes from, their scientific name, and what they eat.

There are plenty of kids out there who love learning strange or better yet super gross animal facts. This one adds lots of fun to the mix. See if you can resist guessing which pictures are butts and which are faces. (I got most of them right, but not all of them.)

karilavelle.com
sourcebookskids.com

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Review of Making Light Bloom, written by Sandra Nickel, illustrated by Julie Paschkis

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Making Light Bloom

Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Lamps

written by Sandra Nickel
illustrated by Julie Paschkis

Peachtree, 2025. 32 pages.
Review written November 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is another picture book biography that tells us about something a woman did that men got the credit for. (Pass Go and Collect $200, by Tanya Lee Stone, about the woman who invented the Monopoly game comes to mind, but I think I have reviewed others.)

In this case, the woman is Clara Driscoll. She grew up in the country loving gardens and flowers and art. As an adult, she moved to New York City to do more with her art. She got a job at the company of the glassmaker Louis C. Tiffany.

She joined a team of artists who selected and cut glass to create pictures and shapes in windows.

Clara showed great talent, so she was put in charge of a workshop staffed only by women.

She hired both experienced artists and untrained immigrants. And as she and her new Tiffany girls worked, Clara inspired them all by reading poetry about nature.

They continued to make glass for windows until Clara had a moment of inspiration.

Though her work kept her busy, Clara missed the house on the hill and its gardens.

One day she had an idea of how to bring their bright beauty to the city. She sent her sisters a letter and asked for yellow butterflies and wild primroses.

Once they arrived, Clara sketched them. But not as a window, with light coming from behind. As a lamp, with light coming from within.

She worked with the Tiffany girls to cut the pieces and with the craftsmen to form the glass into a lampshade. It took so much time and effort to make, one of the managers told Clara not to make any more.

But then, Louis saw what Clara had created and said it was “the most interesting lamp in the place.” He asked her to make another to display at the World’s Fair in Paris.

When the lamp won a bronze medal at the World’s Fair, she was asked to make more lamps and windows filled with gardens and landscapes and flowers. And Clara was put in charge of lamp-making.

“Tiffany lamps” became wildly popular and very valuable. Because Tiffany’s name was on them, no one knew that they were Clara’s design – until a bundle of her letters to her sisters and mother was discovered after both she and Louis Tiffany had died.

The art in this wonderful book is done in a style that matches the lamps Clara created, with dark outlines around simple shapes, as if made of glass themselves.

SandraNickel.com
JuliePaschkis.com
PeachtreeBooks.com

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Review of The Book of Candles, by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Leanne Hatch

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

The Book of Candles

Eight Poems for Hanukkah

written by Laurel Snyder
illustrated by Leanne Hatch

Clarion Books, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written October 13, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

As the title says, this is a book of eight poems for Hanukkah, one for each night of the festival, one for each candle. It’s in picture book form, so in the library, we’ve got it in the Holiday Picture Books section, where we think it will get plenty of checkouts. For Sonderbooks, I’m going to put it on the Children’s Nonfiction page in the Poetry section, because it actually gives good information about Hanukkah, besides the lovely poems.

A couple years ago, a Jewish friend challenged her non-Jewish friends on Facebook to purchase menorahs and light candles in solidarity, and I did so. Now with this book, I have learned more about the holiday. So I recommend it to both Jewish and non-Jewish families. Each poem is lovely, and each is accompanied by “A Thought” for that night.

I especially liked “A Thought for the Fifth Night”:

It’s tradition to avoid doing work while the candles burn, and this goes for everyone! So you can wait until after they fizzle out to do your homework, but you should make sure your parents take a break, too, before they wash the dinner dishes or check their email. The goal is to focus on the light and each other.

That’s far more challenging than spending half a minute to turn on the Christmas tree lights!

The poems and pictures themselves take us through a particular family celebrating Hanukkah together, ending with watching the candles fizzle out.

I also love the Author’s Note at the back:

Hanukkah is a funny sort of holiday. It isn’t like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, when we set aside our lives and disappear into the synagogue. Instead, at Hanukkah, we live our daily lives – go to school, play and laugh as usual, even quarrel (not too often, hopefully).

But then, each night, we set aside time to care, to notice, to light our candles.

Hanukkah doesn’t stop our busy world from spinning, but as we move through each day, we do so with an awareness that something is coming at sunset, something special. Something silly or joyful or peaceful.

And with this book, Laurel Snyder and Leanne Hatch have added a bit of beauty and thoughtfulness to lucky family’s Hanukkah celebrations.

laurelsnyder.com
leannehatch.com

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Review of The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice, by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Anna Bron

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice

How to Discover a Shape

by Amy Alznauer
illustrated by Anna Bron

Candlewick Press, 2025. 48 pages.
Review written October 3, 2025, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

Like another book I recently reviewed, Firefly Song, The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice is a picture book biography of a citizen scientist, a woman who made a notable discovery, even though she didn’t have formal training in that field. Marjorie Rice now has a special place in my heart, because in her case, the field was math.

The biography tells us how Marjorie Rice read an article in Scientific American by Martin Gardner and then got captivated with the idea of finding more five-sided convex shapes that tile a plane. And the stellar art by Anna Bron helps make it clear to the reader what this means.

We learn how she was inspired when a new tiling was discovered – to then search for new five-sided shapes of her own that would work. And she went on to find four of fifteen pentagon types that tile the plane. (Years later, other mathematicians found two more, and then another proved that there were no more.)

This amateur mathematician’s life is especially suited for a picture book biography because her work was so visual – and the artist did a great job of using pentagon tilings throughout the book. Back matter not only tells about the pentagon discoveries after Marjorie, they also give the reader great ideas for exploring shapes, tilings, and tessellations further.

I love that this is the story of a housewife with a curious and playful mind (if perhaps a somewhat obsessive one).

Oh look! I’m ready to post this review and looked up the author’s website. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and also teaches calculus and number theory. This makes me feel like she’s a kindred spirit with me, since I have Master’s degrees in Mathematics and in Library Science – not a typical combination. This explains her excellent picture book biographies of mathematicians. I’m going to keep watching for her books.

amyalz.com
candlewick.com

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Review of Zero! The Number That Almost Wasn’t, by Sarah Albee, illustrated by Chris Hsu

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

Zero!

The Number That Almost Wasn’t

by Sarah Albee
illustrated by Chris Hsu

Charlesbridge, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written July 11, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Fun fact: When Europeans set up the calendar we use today, they did not include a Year Zero. The year after 1 BC was 1 AD. Of course, they were given these names long, long after they happened. But because Europeans didn’t understand zero when they developed the calendar – the Twenty-first Century didn’t actually start until the year 2001. I tried to wrote a short article about this and tried to sell it to children’s magazines in 1999 and 2000, with no success. And I have to admit that switching from 1999 to 2000 feels much more momentous than switching from 2000 to 2001, even if it wasn’t actually the new century yet.

Anyway, all my thinking about when the century started sprang from the moment I learned that Europeans didn’t adopt the symbol zero or even the concept of zero until well past the Middle Ages – and that’s what this book is about.

This picture book explains the history of Zero in a way children can understand. (Yes, without touching on questions of what that means about the start of centuries.) It talks briefly about the concept of Nothing and the concept of Place Value, but it’s mostly about the history of writing numbers.

We hear about the Babylonians – who did use a place value and a mark for an “empty” place. We hear about the Greeks, who were especially strong in astronomy and geometry. The Mayans developed zero earlier than anyone else – but their knowledge was lost when Spanish invaders destroyed their records. Roman numerals came along next, which was difficult for doing complex calculations. But during the Dark Ages in Europe, mathematics thrived in India, where an unknown mathematician invented a symbol for zero.

The concept of zero spread to Baghdad, the center of the Muslim Empire – and writings from Arabic mathematicians took advantage of the concept, developing the field of Algebra.

The book chronicles all this, plus how long it took Europeans to adopt the concept. Sadly, some Christians were even then opposed to an advance of knowledge:

A few Christian leaders actually banished zero. They argued that God had created everything, so something that represented nothing must be the work of the devil.

Finally, the invention of the printing press helped the Hindu-Arabic number system spread as people came to appreciate how much it facilitates doing mathematics.

All that is present in this picture book, with engaging cartoon illustrations. There are even notes at the back about historical details present in the illustrations.

Those who read this book will get a grasp on the mind-blowing fact that Zero had to be invented, and was actually invented much later than you’d think it was. You’ll never take Nothing for granted again.

sarahalbeebooks.com
chrishsu.net

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Review of Home, by Isabelle Simler

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Science, Starred Review 0

Home

by Isabelle Simler
translated by Vineet Lal

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2024. Originally published in France in 2022. 68 pages.
Review written February 5, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Mildred Batchelder Award Honor Book

The Batchelder Award is given to the publishers of the best books published in English, originally published in a country other than the United States and in a language other than English. I’m impressed that a book of poetry won, because I would think that poetry is hard to translate. No, it’s not rhymed poetry, but still, the translator did a beautiful job, and the original illustrations in this book are stunning.

This is a book of poetry – about animal homes. Each spread features a different species and the type of home they live in, narrated by the creature, and telling how they construct their distinctive home.

Some interesting homes featured include the straw apartment complex of the sociable weaver (generations of birds live in these giant nests!), bubble house of the diving bell spider, cactus cabin of the elf owl, foam hiding place of the foam-nest tree frog, and tubular condo of the European fan worm. Many more are featured, and all have beautiful illustrations of their home – with more facts in the back.

A lovely book to browse through and wonder over. We truly have an amazingly varied world.

eerdmans.com

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Review of Birdlore: The Iridescent Life of Florence Merriam Bailey, written by Jess Keating, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Birdlore

The Iridescent Life of Florence Merriam Bailey

written by Jess Keating
illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

Alfred A. Knopf, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written July 21, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I love it when picture book biographies tell me about a person who lived a remarkable life and changed the world – but whom I’d never heard of before. This is one such book.

In 1889, Florence Merriam Bailey wrote the first field guide to American birds ever published. She talked about the wonders of birdwatching and popularized it for everyone.

This picture book tells her story with gorgeous art – as befitting a book about beautiful birds. (As a bonus, at the back, there’s a spread showing Florence’s favorite bird species and asking if you can find all these birds in the pages of the book.) It begins with her childhood in the countryside, when she would delight in finding them. When she got old enough to study birds as a scientist, she didn’t like the normal method at the time of examining dead birds and making them into specimens. So she would take notes on living birds in the outdoors.

When she went to university, Florence made friends with other women interested in birds and showed them her method of taking notes on birds in the wild. The women were scandalized together at the common fashion choice of the time – wearing dead birds on ladies’ hats.

It began a quest to share with people the wonder of birds in the wild – and helped pass the Lacey Act in 1900 that protected birds from illegal trade.

The way the story is told lifts your hearts with the birds and will add to your own appreciation. A lovely book about a woman who helped protect these lovely creatures.

jesskeating.com
devonholzwarth.com
rhcbooks.com

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Review of Some of Us, by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Huy Voun Lee

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

Some of Us

A Story of Citizenship and the United States

by Rajani LaRocca
illustrated by Huy Voun Lee

Christy Ottaviano Books (Little, Brown), 2025. 32 pages.
Review written September 24, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Some of Us is a simple explanation, in picture book form, of what it means to be an American citizen and how people can become American citizens. The writing is easy to understand, suitable for early elementary age children, and lovely and lyrical.

Here’s the beginning, which covers three spreads, accompanied by pictures of a wide variety of people:

Some of us are born American.
Some choose.

We may come from across the world,
or quite nearby.
Some of us are babies, carried in hopeful arms;
some are six, or sixteen, or sixty.

We leave the countries of our birth and come here
by boat, and plane,
and car,
and train,
and foot.

The book talks about different reasons people come, including some pictures of notable immigrants, but also covering those fleeing war, oppression, and poverty. It talks about the food and culture immigrants bring with them, and the good things they do to contribute to their new communities.

Then it covers the process of becoming a naturalized citizen for those who choose to do so, and the difficult process of studying, with a test and an interview.

And then we take an oath –
not to the president,
not to Congress,
but to the ideals of the United States:
freedom, justice, peace, equality.

She then talks about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and concludes with fireworks in the background:

Some of us are born to it.
Some of us choose.
And we are all American.

In the five pages of back matter, the author tells how she became a naturalized citizen when she was fifteen. There are links to more information, but also a page titled “Beyond Citizenship: The Rights of All People,” quoting the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I wish this book weren’t so needed right now – but it is a lovely resource for any time period. It helps children understand, simply and clearly, what citizenship is, how people get it, and what it means.

rajanilarocca.com
LBYR.com

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Review of Firefly Song, by Colleen Paeff, illustrated by Ji-Hyuk Kim

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Firefly Song

Lynn Frierson Faust and the Great Smoky Mountain Discovery

by Colleen Paeff
illustrated by Ji-Hyuk Kim

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written September 16, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Firefly Song stands out among picture book biographies for several reasons, the first being that it’s got gorgeous art. I love the picture of the twilight forest dotted with fireflies and the picture of young Lynn Faust jumping into a Great Smoky Mountains swimming hole.

But it’s also wonderful because of the story it tells. Lynn Frierson Faust essentially trained herself as a scientist. As a child, she enjoyed the dazzling display of the synchronous fireflies at her family’s summer cabin.

When she tried to find out more about fireflies (because those were so wonderful), she discovered that scientists believed there were no synchronous fireflies in North America.

But how to let the scientists know they are wrong? She was met with plenty of skepticism.

It took her years of work and plenty of research to get other scientists to come and confirm what she’d realized all along – that a species of synchronous fireflies lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

The fireflies of Elkmont and their light show are famous now. Each summer, thousands of visitors travel from clear across the world to witness the silent serenade of Photinus carolinus.

There’s nice back matter for those who are intrigued as I was and want to find out more.

colleenpaeff.com
hanuol.com

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