Review by New York Times Review
A HUMAN CORPSE becomes fertile loam for gentle grasses. Bees do little dances for one another that communicate detailed topographies. The oil from whales formed part of the nitroglycerine explosives used in World War II. The magnetic polarity of the earth totally reverses every once in a while, too, we may as well add. The most basic consequences of the facts of our natural world can read as far more magical than any spirit or bending spoon, save we so rarely see nature in that way - for what it is. These four new picture books that focus on nature don't just instill wonder, they renew it. Each one, in telling a relatively straight story of the natural world, reminds us of how much wilder nature is even than our loopiest imaginings. In THE HONEYBEE (ATHENEUM, 48 PR, $17.99; ages 4 to 8), the author Kirsten Hall ("The Jacket") teams up with the gently magnificent illustrator Isabelle Arsenault ("Cloth Lullaby," "Colette's Lost Pet") to bring readers the story of one year, from spring to spring, with the honeybees of a single hive. Hall's charming text proceeds in lightly cadenced lines that mostly rhyme: "Come now, Rest. Join our nest. Huddle and cuddle, the winter's our test." Arsenault's illustrations capture something of the alien vision of bees - bees see a "bee purple" in flowers that is invisible to us - through a neon orange that she uses sparingly amid paler gouache, pencil and ink landscapes. Her flowers and grasses are drawn impressionistically, while the bees themselves are made more emotionally legible with cartoonish eyes and even smiles. Children will love tracing the erratic paths of the honeybees, and come away with a not too distorted sense of the little honey factory inside the unprepossessing, and previously terrifying, hive. The hexagons of honeycomb, as drawn by Arsenault, seem so perfect as to be fanciful precisely when they are fact. HAWK RISING (ROARING BROOK, 48 PP. $18.99; ages 4 to 9), with words by Maria Gianferrari ("Coyote Moon") and illustrations by the Caldecott medalist Brian Floca ("Locomotive," "Princess Cora and the Crocodile"), has a more naturalistic tone, even as the awesomeness of the central bird of prey makes the book read intensely, in the manner of a ghost story. The reader of "Hawk Rising" is set in alliance with two sisters who are watching a father hawk nested near their home. Over the course of the day, he needs to find food for the three hungry chicks in his nest. The prose is not cute, but instead informative and painterly: "Black talons curving onto wood. Hooked beak, sharp as a knife. Head turning. Eyes searching. Chicks waiting." Gianferrari admirably doesn't shy away from precise language, which a child loves to have at hand perhaps even more than an adult does: The hawk doesn't just fly and attack, he rides the wind "like a wave, twisting and turning, kiting and floating." Children's stories about predators generally either choose to make the predator a villain, or to somehow obscure the predator's way of life. "Hawk Rising" does something more honest and more interesting - it simply watches. We see the father hawk failing to get a chipmunk, then harried by crows, then failing to catch sparrows. We see the claws of the hawk up close from the prey's perspective, and we also see the hawk's hungry chicks. Finally the hawk, spotting a squirrel - a squirrel lovingly detailed in a full-spread Audubon-like drawing - succeeds in catching its prey. The expression Floca puts on the watching younger sister's face is wonderfully ambivalent as we see her watching the father hawk fly off, the squirrel in his talons silhouetted against "the navy-blue sky." The story's final move draws attention to the uneasy unity between the humans and the hawks. "Through the night, safe in your nests, you and the Hawk family sleep." HEARTBEAT (ATHENEUM, 56 PR, $17.99; AGES 4 to 8), written and illustrated by Evan Turk ("Muddy"; "The Storyteller"), also focuses tightly on one species: whales. "Heartbeat," however, finds its throughline across time and taxonomy, linking whales and humans through the centuries. The illustrations tell most of this story, while the spare, incantatory prose mostly sets the tone. We see a fetal whale's heart beating near its pregnant mother's. The baby is born, but soon the mother is speared, though this is presented somewhat abstractly, through intrusions of harsh white. The mother's body rises and then becomes a light, then a hundred lights, a million lights, then part of war, eventually even part of mankind's exploration of space. Meanwhile the baby whale longs for its mother. Near the end of the book a young girl at the prow of a ship sees the surviving whale, older now. In sync with the whale's heartbeat and song, she is moved to promise to protect the one ocean, one sea, one song. Turk's intense color palette throughout is mostly inky purples and carmines, interrupted by white cut-outs. You leave this book with the sense of having overheard an unsettling but beautiful lullaby. THE FOREST (ENCHANTED LION, 72 PR, $25.95; ages 4 and up), with words by Ricardo Bozzi (translated from the Italian by Debbie Bibo) and illustrated by Violeta Lopiz and Valerio Viðali, follows the metaphorical associations of a story of nature even farther. This is an essentially existential children's book, which imagines human life itself as an exploration through that famed and sometimes dark forest in which we have often been said to find ourselves. Like pretty much every title published by the small, independent Enchanted Lion books, it is a gorgeous, singular, unimprovable book. The story starts: "It is an enormous, ancient forest that has not yet been fully explored." Inside, a series of bas-reliefs and cut-outs on plain paper shows us first a baby, then a young child... and on through to an old, wrinkled face that eventually yields, becoming lines in a landscape from which new greenery grows. Between the images of a human aging, we see forests, jungles and fields, with animals and humans making their way, sometimes alone, sometimes in a group. Somehow "The Forest" is a work of art that escapes feeling like an "art object" - it succeeds in being for children. The ink on its mylar dust jacket makes a distinctively beautiful sound. The eye-holes and occasional unfoldings alter a reader's sense of space. "It is said that the forest has a certain limit if you look straight ahead, but the sides are boundless." This book takes on even death: "At the end of the climb there is a ravine into which each explorer will eventually fall, despite the precautions taken and the advancements of science." This fall didn't bother my 4-year-old at all. She took interest in the new seedlings, the disappearance of the textured pages, and the return of the pines. RIVKA GALCHEN'S most recent book is "Little Labors."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 29, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Turk's compelling picture book begins with a blue whale cow that soon gives birth to a calf, drawn in red. One heart beats. Two hearts beat. heartbeat . . . heartbeat . . . Two hearts, one song. The whale and her calf, each illustrated with a visible red heart, live in a colorful blue ocean, and their song is depicted in swirls of red, yellow, and blue threads. Mother and baby swim together and sing together until sharp, white harpoons put an end to the older whale's song and heartbeat, leaving the calf alone in the vast ocean. After the cow is killed, the illustrations change to black-and-white. One hundred years pass, and it is a human child who feels a connection and shows compassion for the plight of the whale. She and others begin to understand we have one planet, one responsibility to protect our earth and living creatures. Charcoal and pastels on black paper, collage, and tracing paper combine to produce forceful images. In an author's note, Turk explains his compelling reasons for creating his powerful message: a symbolic trip aboard the last wooden whaleship in 2014 opened his eyes to the reality of the whaling industry and the turbulent relationship between humans and whales. Here, instead, he offers up a message of peace.--Owen, Maryann Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Turk (The Storyteller) creates an achingly poignant tribute to the beauty and dignity of whales. In powerful pastel spreads of intense red, brilliant blue, and deep, oceanic black, Turk shows a mother whale with a yet-to-be-born baby visible inside her: "One heart beats. Two hearts beat." Once born, the baby and the mother sing together, their song rendered as clouds flowing from their mouths. Then a harpoon's barb slashes across the page to find the mother, and the baby's heart beats on without hers in panels of mournful gray. The young whale spends decades alone as its brethren are slaughtered for their oil, which is burned for illumination around the world. Fast forward to the present: a small girl with two pigtails leans from the bow of a boat, hears the lonely whale's song, and sings with it. Turk's impactful artwork reinforces the powerful, easily graspable metaphor of the heartbeat, representing the unity of human and animal life. The more complex message about the commodification of ocean life, detailed in an appended note, will require careful context setting and explanation. Ages 4-8. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-Turk employs an extended metaphor of shared heartbeats among living beings to demonstrate that we are all a part of the same world. Using pastel and charcoal on black paper, Turk introduces a whale and her calf, whose heartbeats are in sync and swim through a blurring symphony of sound. Jagged white harpoons disrupt this harmony, striking the mother whale like lightning and shattering their connection. She is hauled aboard a whaling vessel and the calf, who is no longer vibrant but a pale ghost of herself, now has a hole where once her heart beat. The artwork becomes stark as collage cutouts depict the human world and how it uses the parts of a whale. From lamp oil to machine lubricant, the ghost calf swims through the very worst of human atrocities for 100 years. It's only in the present, when a young girl sings out to the now adult whale, that she discovers her song and heartbeat again. As other people sing along with the young girl, joining the whale, the connection between all our heartbeats lends an air of hope. An author's note provides a thorough summary explaining vital historical details regarding the whaling industry and inspiration for writing this book. Without this note, many readers may be confused since Turk's writing is more lyrical than informational. This is a high-concept book and will work best when an adult shares in the reading experience with a child. VERDICT A beautiful and poignant piece about humanity's past and future, this is best suited for perceptive readers with a passion for the environment.-Rachel Zuffa, Racine Public Library, WI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
After a young whale's mother is killed by a whaler, it swims around forlornly for years, until a girl on a ship's deck hears its song. Many kids (and some adults) will be confounded by this story, which is told through minimal, fragmentary text; the dark, symbolism-heavy art is similarly hard to crack. The light-shedding author's note is indispensable. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this artistically rendered picture book, a whale lives through 200 years of human history, taking readers from the brutal whaling industry to activism for harmony with the ocean and its creatures.Deep purple and red hues in soft pastel and charcoal set the tone for an emotional journey in this latest work by Turk (The Storyteller, 2016, etc.). Beginning with a red glowing spot and purple background and the words "heart / beat," one heartbeat inside a whale becomes two heartbeats when the whale becomes pregnant. After she gives birth, the whale calf and its mother breathe "one song" into "one ocean." Their harmony is cut off when straight, sharp white shapes and lines intrude upon the page. Colors give way to black and white as heartbeats stagger, and the whale calf is left alone, "one heart, one song." Whale-shaped lamps are lit, machines are oiled, which knowledgeable readers can connect to the use of whale oil. Time passes, often violently. Finally, the story comes full circle as a concerned girl with afro puffs looks out from a boat with concern and joins the whale's song. Many voices join in, until the soft red and purple pastels return, along with the text "One world, one song, one heartbeat." The illustrations are evocative and emotional, although caregivers will likely need to help younger readers with the abstract storytelling.A memorable journey for sophisticated readers. (author's note) (Picture book. 5-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
