Review of Airports: Behind the Scenes, illustrated by Maxim Usik

Children's Nonfiction Review, History 0

Airports

Behind the Scenes

by Anna Ridley
illustrated by Maxim Usik
consultant Laurence Hardisty

Thames and Hudson, 2026. 48 pages.
Review written June 1, 2026, from a library book.

Taking a trip with kids? Here’s a detailed and fascinating in-depth look at what goes on behind the scenes. I still recommend The Airport Book, by Lisa Brown, for very young children and preschoolers. But for kids who are reading on their own and love poring over detailed pictures, this oversized book will be ideal preparation. Okay, it’s really too big to conveniently carry with you – but kids will enjoy it so much in preparation for a trip, it’s worth it.

The book goes through the different parts of an airport – ticketing, security, baggage conveyor systems, through activity on the ground around the plane, air traffic control, and how things work inside the plane.

There are kid-centered questions throughout the book: “Do suitcases get mixed up?” “Why can’t I ride on the luggage carousel?” “Can I take snakes on a plane?” “Can a body scanner see me naked?” “Why is that airplane being towed?” “Who flies the plane when the pilot needs to go to the bathroom?” “How many planes are in the air at one time?” “Why can’t we fly with the windows open?” and “Why do I feel like farting?”

The whole book is filled with detailed pictures, answers to questions like those above and lots more, and plenty of information even I hadn’t known before I read this book. (So it wasn’t just that I ate the wrong thing before the flight!)

I like that this is a modern book, with modern scanners and security requirements, likely to match what a child will see at the airport today.

Interesting and informative, and a great way to get thinking about my upcoming trip to France!

maximusik.art

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/airports.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of The Black Mambas, by Kelly Crull

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

The Black Mambas

The World’s First All-Woman Anti-Poaching Unit

by Kelly Crull

Millbrook Press, 2025. 42 pages.
Review written May 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

The story told in this nonfiction picture book (for upper elementary school readers) is just plain cool.

The Black Mambas are a group of women park rangers who protect the wildlife of the Olifants West Nature Reserve in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.

The book explains the problem of poachers and how and why animals living in the reserve were being killed. Then it talks about local young women being recruited and learning the job – and the training and physically hard work they do to detect signs of poachers and stop them. Women are empowered to protect their communities.

This book is super informative and lavishly illustrated with photographs. It’s also inviting to young readers. Right at the front, there are head shots of twenty members of the Black Mambas, with their first names and the question, “Can you find all of us in the book?” They have little quizzes like identifying animal tracks and thinking how you would patrol given a map where poacher tracks have been found. (Note: Some of the quizzes seem a little too hard. On the page asking you to find “all four snares in this area,” I couldn’t find them at all and didn’t see a place with answers. Other simpler quizzes, like the one matching tracks, did have answers on the page.)

I especially liked the page with the Code of Honor. The reader is asked to “Stand proud and say these words with us.” The Code of Honor begins:

I am a Mamba hear me clear,
Poachers be warned, I have no fear.
Fauna and flora I pledge to protect,
There is always something to detect.
Eyes and ears serve the ground,
Here and there and all around.
From dusk to dawn, this promise I keep,
Protect the voiceless while they sleep.

The book includes photos of things they recovered at a poacher camp, as well as close-ups of the animals they protect (which are still dangerous).

They also have an educational component, teaching the children of surrounding villages to protect and take pride in their animal neighbors.

This is a gorgeous book about a group of women doing powerful and valuable work.

kellycrull.com
transfrontierafrica.org/blackmambas

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/help.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of Growing Up Under a Red Flag, written by Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Xinmei Liu

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Growing Up Under a Red Flag

A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution

written by Ying Chang Compestine
illustrated by Xinmei Liu

Rocky Pond Books, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Growing Up Under a Red Flag is a memoir in picture book form, which makes it easy for children to grasp what’s going on. It’s geared to upper elementary kids.

The book begins with the author a little girl in China in the 1960s. Her parents were both doctors, and her father taught her English and told her stories of America and corresponded with a doctor in San Francisco.

My mother wasn’t always pleased with me because I didn’t behave like a traditional Chinese girl – speaking in a low voice, playing piano, and learning the fan dance. But my father loved my curiosity and strong spirit. He answered my endless questions and clapped with me when I sang English folk songs at the top of my lungs.

But then the Cultural Revolution came. They couldn’t speak English inside their home and listened to Voice of America in secret. And then a soldier moved into her father’s study.

They ended up burning all their English books and notes – but it wasn’t enough, and her father was arrested anyway.

The book shows the hardships of the years that followed, the scarcity of food and necessities, and the struggles without her father.

I did love that by the end of the book, her father was released, and she finishes with the whole family gathered years later in San Francisco. That way, despite the difficulties depicted, readers are left with the way things turned out good in the end. Which makes for a cheerier picture book. Kids can grasp the injustice of the hard times that happened, but the story ends on a happy note.

Yingc.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/growing_up_under_a_red_flag.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of Omnibird, by Giselle Clarkson

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Omnibird

An Avian Investigator’s Handbook

by Giselle Clarkson

Gecko Press, 2025. 96 pages.
Review written May 12, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Omnibird: An Avian Investigator’s Handbook is packed with entertaining and informative content to help kids learn about the birds all around them.

The “Omnibird” idea is reflected in spreads on bird anatomy that identify the parts of a bird, inside and out. Many are labeled “Optional,” such as caruncles (featherless fleshy bits), spurs (sharp points for fighting), and a comb. Several parts refer to a display of many options on another page – such as the aforementioned caruncles, as well as beaks and feet.

Inside, we see how birds are quite different from us, with their small hindbrain and forebrain, their gizzard, their many neck vertebrae, the syrinx (voice box), and optional crop.

All this information about birds in general takes up the front half of the book, and then we get to see spreads about specific types of birds. It’s all told with humor, speech bubbles, clever drawings, and is super interesting and engaging. There are lots of practical side cartoons, such as “How to Usher a Bird Outdoors” “How to Act Around a Scary Bird,” and “How to Pick Up a Chicken.”

Yes, this book will help kids identify particular birds, but more importantly, it will make kids want to identify them. Reading this book presents birds as fascinating creatures who live all around us and whose bodies and behaviors reflect how they live.

A possible drawback is that the book is too large for a kid to take outside with them on a whim, but all the information packed on the large pages is worth the trade-off. This book is perfect for kids who love to pore over big books of facts – and then they can apply what they’ve learned to investigate the birds in their own neighborhoods.

giselledraws.com
geckopress.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/omnibird.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of The Sky Was My Blanket, by Uri Shulevitz

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Sky Was My Blanket

A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe

by Uri Shulevitz

Farrar Straus Giroux, 2025. 154 pages.
Review written April 29, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

The Sky Was My Blanket is the last book written by the brilliant Uri Shulevitz, completed months before his death in 2025. In it, he uses first person perspective to tell the incredible story of his uncle’s adventures during World War II as they were told to him.

His uncle Yehiel was born in Warsaw during World War I, so his first memories are of being hungry. I hadn’t really appreciated how little time passed between World War I and World War II (especially for people in Europe) until I read this book, because when this child who was born during World War I left home at fifteen and a half, he quickly got embroiled in war. However, he survived the experience, and the family he left behind did not.

Be aware that this book is written for kids using simple language and short chapters, but the topic is war, so it’s appropriate for upper elementary and middle school kids who can handle heavy topics. There’s nothing graphic, but Yehiel did plenty of fighting in trenches and on battlefields, and many of his friends and family died.

Yehiel originally left because he felt his father was oppressive and he wanted to see the world. He left without money or luggage or papers. At first he traveled across Europe from Jewish community to Jewish community and found work and strangers to help him. He was hoping to make his way to the Holy Land, but in Vienna, he took some wise advice and trained to become a leathersmith while also attending Hebrew school. He left Vienna in 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany and Nazi swastikas started showing up in Austria.

Next, after a winding journey, he joined his brother in Paris, but after losing his job, joined a friend in Barcelona and learned to be a tailor. However, a year later, Franco attacked government troops and started the Spanish Civil War. Yehiel signed up to fight against him with other international soldiers.

And that’s how the rest of the story goes – he traveled from one country to another, sometimes fighting, sometimes resisting, sometimes just trying to survive. After the war, Uri and his father – Yehiel’s only surviving brother – visited him in Paris and heard his amazing story, told in this book.

I’ve read plenty of novels set during World War II, but the opportunity to hear personal true stories is quickly closing. I’m glad Uri Shulevitz wrote this one down for young readers.

urishulevitz.com
mackids.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/sky_was_my_blanket.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of Goldfinches, by Mary Oliver, art by Melissa Sweet

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Goldfinches

by Mary Oliver
art by Melissa Sweet

Viking, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written April 20, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This little book is a poem by Mary Oliver – illustrated by Caldecott Honor illustrator Melissa Sweet. The poem about goldfinches shows the author observing in fields as goldfinches fly by and make their nests. Then a note at the back explains how Mary Oliver did just that – and Melissa Sweet imitated her to make authentic pictures.

I also enjoyed how the artist put a palette of colors at the front, labeled with phrases from the poem, and you can find them later in the book.

But of course what I love most is the poem, which grew on me more each time I read it – and Melissa Sweet’s illustrations helped me appreciate it more from the start.

Here’s how the poem ends:

Is it necessary to say any more?
Have you heard them singing in the wind, above the final fields?
Have you ever been so happy in your life?

This book has the power to fill you with peace and happiness and send you out to nature to find even more.

MaryOliver.com
MelissaSweet.net
Penguin.com/kids

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/goldfinches.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of Smash, Crash, Topple, Roll! by Catherine Thimmesh, illustrated by Shanda McCloskey

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

Smash, Crash, Topple, Roll!

The Inventive Rube Goldberg

A Life in Comics, Contraptions, and Six Simple Machines

by Catherine Thimmesh
illustrated by Shanda McCloskey

Chronicle Books, 2025. 54 pages.
Review written March 24, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a picture book biography of Rube Goldberg, but it’s got so much more. You know Rube Goldberg? He was the cartoonist who diagrammed crazily complicated machines to do simple tasks. As a cartoonist, he never built the machines himself, but now on the internet, you can find hundreds of videos of people who actually built machines inspired by his cartoons.

This book tells his story – he went to college and studied engineering to please his father. He didn’t last long as an engineer, but looking at patent diagrams gave him the ideas for his famous cartoons.

But the book explains the six simple machines for the reader – the lever, the wheel & axle, the inclined plane, the wedge, the screw, and the pulley. We get explanations of how they work and tips for how they can be used in your own Rube Goldberg inventions.

Back matter tells you what to search for to see modern Rube Goldberg machines in action. The first one I searched, I couldn’t help but watch twice. And the main text of the book ends with steps for building your own, one of which is “Embrace Murphy’s Law.” I foresee kids having a whole lot of fun and creating amazing things, inspired by this book.

One note is that the print is very small throughout the book, and it begins with a Rube Goldberg-like diagram, which is a little tricky to follow and also has fine print. So this book is for upper elementary and middle school kids with good reading skills. Those who persist are sure to have their imagination sparked.

shandamc.com
chroniclekids.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/smash_crash_topple_roll.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of The Big Book of Pi, by Anita Lehmann, Jean-Baptiste Aubin, and Joonas Sildre

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Big Book of Pi

The Famous Number You Can Never Know

by Anita Lehmann, Jean-Baptiste Aubin, and Joonas Sildre

Helvetiq Publishing, 2026. First published in Switzerland.
Review written March 31, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

How much do I love that this book exists? An uncountable quantity! This book is a kid-friendly look at the number pi. It gives a basic explanation of pi, the history of pi and how it gets used, including lots of people who developed the concept. It explains pi’s relationship with circles, the concept of irrational numbers, explores the implications of infinite digits, and how pi has been calculated over the years. And of course the history of people reciting digits of pi. It finishes up with practical tricks you can do to amaze your friends using pi.

And throughout, things are kept light with plenty of pi puns and cartoon illustrations. The illustrations help explain the concepts, and it’s all written at a level that an upper elementary school or middle school student can understand. Budding math geeks will love it!

And yes, I learned things about the history of pi – like the guy who thought he’d calculated pi to 707 digits, but it was discovered after his death that every number after the 527th was incorrect. Or that two pairs of brothers, one pair in Scotland and one pair in Ukraine, simultaneously worked on Ramanujan’s formula to each independently create the same new, even better formula for calculating more digits of pi.

I also didn’t know that before William Jones started using the Greek letter pi for this quantity, it was known as: “The quantity which, when the diameter is multiplied by it, yields the circumference” – except in Latin.

Lots of cool math facts to be found here! Try putting it in front of your own kid and see if it doesn’t pull them in.

anita-lehmann.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/help.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of A World Without Summer, by Nicholas Day with art by Yas Imamura

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

A World Without Summer

A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out

by Nicholas Day
with art by Yas Imamura

Random House Studio, 2025. 294 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Sibert Honor Book
2026 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist

A World Without Summer won Honor in the nonfiction award from both the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) – which highlights that here is a nonfiction book perfect for middle school students. It also gives me a dilemma where to post the review – on the Teen Nonfiction page or the Children’s Nonfiction page? Recently, I’ve started leaning toward putting any nonfiction longer than a picture book on the Teen Nonfiction page, but since I put Nicholas Day’s debut book and Sibert winner, The Mona Lisa Vanishes, on the Children’s Nonfiction page, and they are very much alike, I’m going to post this one there, too – but be aware that the sweet spot for this book is middle school and upper elementary.

Because I read an adult fantasy novel called Without a Summer, by Mary Robinette Kowal, I already knew that it snowed in Washington, D. C., in July 1816 because of a volcano that erupted in another part of the world. This book told me much, much more.

The author keeps the conversational tone he used in The Mona Lisa Vanishes and starts off by telling the reader about Tambora, a volcano in Indonesia that erupted in 1815 – and just how utterly enormous that eruption was. He talks about the people who died in that eruption – and the thousands who died in the aftermath. But the later thousands who died as a direct result of that eruption didn’t even know it was because of the eruption.

After talking about the original eruption, Nicholas Day takes us to Europe, where the oddities began with yellow and brown snow, which nobody knew was from the ash of the volcano. As it turned out, summer never came in places across the globe – and neither did harvest.

But besides talking about gruesome deaths that were a result of Tambora, the author also tells us the story of Mary Godwin, who became Mary Shelley – and wrote Frankenstein the same year the climate was all out of whack. We get the whole story of her elopement and trip to Switzerland – and just how much they complained about the weather.

Nicholas Day is exceptionally good at bringing the reader into the story, getting them thinking with questions, and helping them see the connections between that past world, disrupted by climate shock, and our present world, which has some new technologies (like forecasting weather) thanks to the disruptions of Tambora, but is still vulnerable to global events.

I’m going to go ahead and quote from a closing section, because it shows where he goes with this story, and I don’t think it’s a spoiler in nonfiction.

While Mary Shelley was writing the great novel of catastrophe, people across the world were working in wholly new ways to prevent catastrophe. These were governments, and they were ordinary people, too. They were working on behalf of a simple idea, a new idea: that those who were suffering could survive – that they should survive – that they deserved to survive.

That there were things that could be done and should be done.

When we remember Tambora, what stands out is the bleak and the strange: the skeletal figures, the sawdust bread, the boils on the face of the sun. The disease. The distress.

But we should remember this part, too.

Without this idealistic work – without the invention of this idealistic idea – far more would have suffered. Far more would have perished. Tambora was a warning.

But hidden inside it is this deeply hopeful truth: We can act.

Read this book to learn, to hear a good story, and to think about the ways we earthlings are connected.

bynicholasday.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/world_without_summer.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Review of Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals, by Teri Kanefield

Children's Nonfiction Review, Current Issues, History, Starred Review 0

Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals

The Story of the Bill of Rights

by Teri Kanefield

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025. 216 pages.
Review written March 4, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, a note that this is not picture book nonfiction. I’ll put it on the Children’s Nonfiction page, but this is targeted to middle school and upper elementary students who can read longer material.

I love Teri Kanefield’s legal writing. Her calm voice on her blog is long where I’ve gone to understand present-day legal issues. So of course I checked out this book for children on the Bill of Rights.

And I’d had no idea how interesting that topic could be. She explains her approach at the back of the book:

I hit on the idea of presenting the material the way the law is presented to law students – through actual court cases. The case method avoids abstract principles and tedious explanations. Instead, the law is presented through the stories and struggles of actual people. The principles and laws are woven into the fabric of the case the way morals are woven into fables.

Stories of real people involved in real struggles are always livelier than dry explanations, particularly when those stories include bank robbers like Bonnie and Clyde, high school students challenging violations of their rights, rebels who refuse to obey laws they believe to be unjust, and people considered radical because they want to entirely remake the government. The statement “you have the right to a jury trial” will have little relevance to most people. But when we read about the Zenger trial and see that juries were devised to guard against the kind of tyranny that early Americans experienced under British rule, the right to a jury takes on a real-world meaning.

Teri Kanefield achieves these goals in a book that’s interesting every step of the way. She goes through each one of the first ten amendments and gives examples showing how the interpretation of each amendment affected people’s lives – and still affect them today. She talks about how things have changed over time, about the conflict between states’ rights and federal rights, and about things like how the “right to privacy” isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, and how it’s a question of the ninth amendment whether the federal government can rule on that.

Although this book is completely suitable for upper elementary age readers, I can testify that it’s great reading for adults, too. As always with Teri’s writing, I learned things about the law of our land that I hadn’t known I didn’t know.

terikanefield.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/rebels_robbers_and_radicals.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?