Review by Booklist Review
Happiness, indeed! Starting with the cover, you can't help but smile along with the featured sloth, who appears content to human viewers. But what does this brown-throated sloth, a type of three-toed sloth, do all day? In spare, poetic rhyming text ("A tree is sloth salad. / Rip! Snip! / Chew. Chew. / Head turn. / Slowwwwly scan. / What's the treetop view?"), the text describes routine sloth activities in the rain forest canopy of Panama's Soberanía National Park. From eating and napping to back scratching and hiding from predators, gorgeous up-close and large-format photos taken in the wild depict the sloth in its natural environment. Related sidebars add fascinating details about sloth life, such as how it camouflages, digests food like a cow, and, despite commonly held myths, doesn't sleep all day. Because the sloth doesn't live in isolation, the photos also portray rain forest companions, with action words ("Hammer. / Hover. / Crunch. / Catch") contrasting their quick, busy movements. Across several spreads, the Sayres highlight, in particular, the physical differences between the sloth and howler monkeys to show how these differences affect their lifestyles. Finally, as the day draws to a close and the diurnal sloth readies for rest, the nocturnal Hoffman's sloth, a type of two-toed sloth emerges. More sloth facts and their interconnectedness to other species concludes this cheery, attractive science book.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Combining crisp photographs of sloths moving about a forest canopy with bite-size observations about sloth life, this smartly paced collaboration by the late Pulley Sayre and husband Sayre follows sloth movements over a day. "After a rainy,/ drizzly night," a sodden sloth climbs to reach the sun's warmth: "When you live/ inside your laundry,/ morning's/ drip-dry/ time." Slowly paced lines, full spreads that highlight various poses, and accessible notes (for example, covering sloth claws, digestion, and threats) invite readers to linger over the subject matter. These components also juxtapose deliberate sloth maneuvers with those of other rainforest species, portrayed using panels and quick phrases ("Hammer./ Hover./ Crunch./ Catch"). It's as close to a forest canopy trek as one can have from a comfy chair. Back matter includes sloth facts and a resource list. Ages 3--8. (Mar.)
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Review by Horn Book Review
This book describes a day in the life of a Panamanian sloth (in reality, per the acknowledgments, a composite of eight years of expeditions and of two separate species) in a poem of joyful observations of the sloth and many other inhabitants, friendly and fearsome, of the forest canopy. In the midst of all the action rests the title creature -- photographed in bright and crisp detail -- leisurely drying its fur, scratching its back, chomping on leaves ("a tree is sloth salad"), and surveying the activity of others. The late Sayre's (Being Frog, rev. 1/20; Cityscape, rev. 7/20) rhymes capture the contrasts between the other busy animals and the resting sloth: "Swish, swish! / Howlers hop. / Monkeys shake / the leafy ocean. / Branches rise and fall. / The sloth sways with the motion." The well-designed layout balances stanzas in white spaces alongside, atop, or opposite the impressive images. More detailed information about topics such as sloth behavior, eating and digestion, and survival are found in color panels in the margins of the layouts, as well as in an appended "Sloth Science" spread. Danielle J. Ford March/April 2022 p.(c) Copyright 2022. 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.
