Somefin in Common! Just Like Us! Fish by Bridget Heos

Humans live up in the air and fish live down in the water. We walk; they swim.

So how could we be anything alike? Well, did you know fish can be doting parents and good teammates? Or that they go to the spa, where they are pampered by other fish?

They use weapons to hunt and armor to protect themselves. Some fish even use lures to, well, go fishing!

Sure, some fish lay their eggs and swim away. But the daddy seahorse carries the eggs in his pouch, and even after the little ones hatch, they still nap and take refuge back inside their safe place. And cichlid parents keep their eggs inside their large mouths, and when the small fry hatch, they still pack themselves (like sardines in a can) inside when something scary cruises by.

And it's Ah! the Spa! for the toothy barracuda, who remains perfectly still so that a little swarm of wrasses can remove parasites from their scaly bodies. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and the little fish get lunch and protection for their work. In fact, if one happens to nip the big guy, the boss wrasse chases them away as if to say...

"What are you doing? That was one of our best customers!"

Some species are not so sanguine about their fellow fish. The angler fish sports his own fishing pole, with a fat, tasty-looking blob dangling to fool the gullible, and the stoplight loosejaw flashes red and green lights to lure prey to be his lunch.

Sometimes well-schooled, small fish find safety in numbers, swimming en masse to daze and confuse their predators. And some fish come with considerable offensive and defensive arms and armor: the warrior swordfish, the sawfish, the prickly porcupine fish, and the electric catfish come equipped like medieval warriors. Young halibut don't sport weapons, but the small fry know how to make the best of one neighborhood bully that nobody messes with--the jellyfish--hiding among its tentacles when a predator comes in sight. Nanna-nanna-boo boo! Can't catch me!

And for the salmon, there's no place like home, heading back to the old homeplace for the family reunion every year.

Bridget Heos' new entry in her nonfiction series, Just Like Us! Fish (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) shows the many ways the fishes imitate people (or maybe we imitate them) to thrive under the sea. Artist Dave Clark has a lot of fun with his comic illustrations of fish making like humans, with plenty of visual humor on each double-page spread. Author Heos appends a handy glossary (Say What?), a bibliography, and a list of web articles for young piscine experts to polish up their science reports like pros.

Boning Up On Bees: Amazing Bees by Sue Unstead

Bees are amazing. They help flowers make fruits and seeds, and they give us sweet honey.

So let's find out what makes bees so special!

As familiar as the cheery little blossom buzzers are in poem and story and in our gardens, bees themselves are as strange as any sci-fi aliens. Like all insects, they have segmented bodies with three discrete parts and six legs. They have strong wings and sensitive antennae which they use to communicate.They have two great big compound eyes, and three little ones for close work. Their bodies are very hairy, and bees' knees are all they're cracked up to be, with little pockets for that all-important pollen collection.

Sue Unstead's fact-filled but easy-reading DK Readers L2: Amazing Bees (Dorling Kindersley, 2017), offers a wide range of bee lore, from their lives from eggs to larvae to pupae to bees. Until they hatch as adults, "baby" bees in all their stages require wax cells as nurseries and much regular care from the grown-ups. When they finally emerge from the early stages, there are three main types of adults--the one-and-only queen of each hive, the drones, and the workers, but workers may be pollen and nectar collectors, or they may be baby tenders, armed guards, and maintenance workers back at the hive. Bees are indeed social insects and live in a unique society.

In addition to life in the hive, author Unstead covers many of the important aspects of bee society, such as bee communications ("dancing" and "waggling"), bee senses (bees see flowers in different colors from human eyes), bee business--collecting nectar and pollen to feed the hive and store as honey and incidentally pollinating the plants that we humans depend on for our own food, fuel, and shelter. Unstead even goes into bees other than the popular honeybee, from bumblebees to several species of smaller bees who make no honey but also serve as miniature pollinators; and she also presents those curious bees that eschew hives, building nests from soil and grass, carefully cut leaves, and those opportunists who make do with holes in trees, fallen branches, and in the ground. Illustrated by Dorling Kindersley's trademark up-close color photographs, this level two book is accessible to most primary-grade readers, and its use as a nature science book is bolstered by a self-quiz for students and an excellent glossary of terms, all of which can help any kid to BE a bee specialist!

Born to Bloom: Weeds Find a Way by Cindy Jenson-Elliott

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
--Tennyson

Cindy Jenson-Elliott is not the first poet to sing the praises of the lowly but tenacious weed, sometimes the first flower of spring, which finds a way to bloom and seed our world with green, nor is she the first to find a larger theme in their relentless will to live.

WEEDS FIND A WAY TO LIVE

WHERE OTHER PLANTS CAN'T GROW.

As her barefoot girl and her dog explore her world, she finds four dandelions and can't resist blowing their parachute seeds, sending them wind-borne into the world. As she goes through late-summer days, she and her dog help spread the seeds of the weeds they pass through, one sticking in the sole of her sneaker, several burrs clinging to her dog's fur and her clothes, to fall perhaps on a fertile spot, sleep under the snow, and sprout next spring.

Weeds fight for their rights, with hooks and thorns, with hard shells, with bitter or sticky sap that defeat their enemies and co-opt their allies into distributors. They hide inside sweet fruit and let the birds do the rest of the work, sowing and fertilizing them at the same time.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Jenson-Elliott reminds her readers that in their way, weeds are wonders, softening bare fields, sweetening sour soil, and embellishing rocky hills with greenery and sometimes glorious flowers...

SENDING UP FLARES OF RIOTOUS RED,

EXHALING BREATH AS SWEET AS SLEEP,

UMBRELLAS OF FINEST WHITE LACE.

WEEDS FIND A WAY TO STAY.

Part nature study, part a hymn to the resolute drive to thrive in nature, Cindy Jenson-Elliot's Weeds Find a Way (Beach Lane Books, 2014), illustrated in evocative expressionistic mixed-media paintings by Carolyn Fisher, will increase the child's appreciation of the ubiquitous, plucky weed in whatever form it takes to survive, and in so doing, suggests, as did Tennyson's "all in all,"  that weeds represent the steadfast will to live found throughout nature, even among us humans.

The author adds an appendix, "Meet the Weed," which provides thumbnail color drawings and factual entries detailing the scientific name, habitat, form, and physiology of common weeds, which makes this book useful for classroom field studies and projects as well as simple backyard exploration. School Library Journal gives this one its hearty thumbs-up: "Poetic imagery describes how they are "shot out of tight, dry pods like confetti from a popped balloon" and "baking in shimmering summer heat on a white-hot sidewalk without a whisper of wind"), and the bold colors of the mixed media/digital collage illustrations do an admirable job of making the ordinary become stunning..... Expect to have readers rooting and exploring for the ubiquitous plants."

Roundup! Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman

A SPIRAL IS A GROWING SHAPE.
IT STARTS SMALL
AND GETS BIGGER,
SWIRL BY SWIRL.

It's not every day that a new book makes a reviewer jump (or in this case swirl) with joy. But Joyce Sidman's and Beth Krommes' new Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) is such a book. Newbery winner (for Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems (Caldecott Honor Book, BCCB Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award))) Joyce Sidman provides a lyrical text which only adds to the striking beauty of Caldecott artist (for The House in the Night) Beth Krommes' lissome illustrations, gloriously done on bright white in amazingly detailed scratchboard and watercolor wash, inspiring wonder at the beauty and function of the nature's amazing spiral.

IT TWISTS THROUGH THE AIR
WITH CLOUDS ON ITS TAIL.

IT STRETCHES STARRY ARMS
THROUGH SPACE.
SPINNING AND SPARKLING,
FOREVER EXPANDING.

From the protected curl of a hibernating snake or chipmunk, to the unfolding wonder of a fiddlehead fern, from the tactile and visual beauty of a spiral seashell to the delicate tendrils of a growing vine, the spiral is one of nature's finest architectural creations, one which protects the threatened hedgehog and gives the New World monkey his astonishingly strong prehensile tail.

From a delicate orb spider's web to the power of a breaking wave, spirals are everywhere, present in the terrible beauty of the tornado and the star-studded structure of the Milky Way galaxy which is our place in space. The spiral serves us, fills us with awe, and with its curvaceous form delights the human eye with its mathematical perfection.

Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature is a unique and magnetic picture book, one bound to be in contention for medal honors, and one deserving of an honored place in any collection, private or public.

Jane of the Jungle: Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell

JANE LOVED TO BE OUTSIDE.

ONE DAY CURIOUS JANE WONDERED WHERE EGGS CAME FROM.

SO SHE SNUCK INTO GRANDMA NUTT'S CHICKEN COOP.

SHE STAYED VERY STILL.... AND OBSERVED THE MIRACLE.

IT WAS A MAGICAL WORLD, FULL OF JOY AND WONDER AND SHE FELT VERY MUCH A PART OF IT.

In Patrick McDonnell's just published Me . . . Jane Little, Brown, 2011), this nature-loving Jane is, of course, our Jane Goodall, whose landmark studies of chimps and gorillas have broadened our understanding of primate life.

In McDonnell's soft, unassuming little vignettes, we see the young Jane with her cherished toy chimp Jubilee (who comes to life when alone outside with Jane), climbing her favorite tree ("Beech") and with cheek pressed to the trunk, dreaming of all she wants to see, inspecting birds' nests, watching squirrels and the barnyard animals, and reading all the books she can get. Reading Tarzan of the Apes, dreaming of being that Jane and living in her jungle, seeing those animals for herself. Her dream is to learn all she can.

And then McDonnell shows little Jane, climbing into bed at home with Jubilee beside her, the stars outside her window...

AND FALLING ASLEEP...

TO WAKE ONE DAY TO HER DREAM COME TRUE.

And with the turn of a page, rising from a camp cot inside her tent is the grown-up Jane, signature ponytail in place and her studies behind her, ready to begin her historic life's work where she always longed to be.

McDonnell's previous picture books, such as Hug Time, are pleasant, popular works, a touch sentimental, but with this first venture into nonfiction, he hits one over the fence. Yes, lovable as it is, with little Jane enjoying a walk in the woods hand-in-hand with the come-to-life Jubilee, this one is pitch perfect, capturing the essence of Goodall, a person for whom nature and its creatures are infinitely fascinating and worthy of our respectful attention, in a way young children will absolutely get. Patrick McDonnell deserves all the starred reviews in Kirkus, Horn Book, School Library Journal, and Booklist that he garnered for this one, with its wonderful photos from Jane's childhood (especially Jane with the real Jubilee) which show that, to paraphrase the poet, the child is mother of the scientist!

With "A Message from Jane" in its brief appendix, Me . . . Jane is a rare early childhood biography, a staple for Earth Day activities and for the every nonfiction shelf.