Review by Booklist Review
Many animals set out on annual migrations, but the Arctic tern puts them all to shame, flying 60,000 miles from pole to pole. This tale follows a newly hatched tern in Greenland as she attempts her first trip across the world. As the flock flies under northern lights and across the sea, grabbing snacks on the go and resting on beaches and cliff sides, the little tern grows in strength and confidence, encountering noisy flamingos, ravenous humpback whales, and a sneaky skua bird. On and on they fly, eventually recuperating in the Antarctic before making the return trip. It all makes for a great story, and the text is lyrical and lively, conveying the tern chatter in kip-kip-kips and kree-ah, kree-ahs. A wooden background lends a textured, stylized touch to the lovely illustrations, all of which impart real sense of movement and the grand scale of travel. A more compact and detailed description of Arctic terns rounds things out on the final pages. A remarkable depiction of a truly extraordinary natural wonder.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"She will make it every/ year of her life,/ chasing sun and food/ for thirty years." Hevron pays tribute to the arctic tern and its incredible 60,000-mile annual migration in this awe-inspiring travelogue. After its wintertime birth on the Greenland tundra, an avian traveler heads south, stopping in the Canary Islands, soaring above northwest Africa, resting outside the Cape of Good Hope, and venturing over the polar Southern Ocean, summering in Antarctica before returning north at a breakneck pace, completing the trip back in just six weeks. Hevron sprinkles sound effects throughout ("Kip-kip-kip!") and underscores the strenuousness of the tern's massive journey. The bird narrowly survives a skua attack, "flails against headwinds," "battles" a storm, and "struggles" to keep pace. Digitally collaged acrylic and pencil images foreground the scale of the journey through a mix of maps and renderings of the terns on high. Back matter includes further information and suggested reading. Ages 5--8. (July)
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Review by Horn Book Review
A young Arctic tern's extraordinary migration route takes her from the North Pole to the South Pole and back -- "the longest migration of any living creature on Earth." Within just two months of her birth, "flapping and fluttering, the little Arctic tern takes off" from Greenland, one of twenty in a flock that will pass over oceans and continents, with brief rests on island beaches and floating driftwood. Hevron's account of the three-month journey explains events both perilous and wondrous, with collective nouns and sound words emphasized throughout: the birds soar over a "flamboyance" of Liberian flamingos, pods of humpback whales, and "tuk-tuk-tuk!...a raft of macaroni penguins" but are also threatened by a great skua ("Pyeh! Pyeh!") and powerful storms. Hevron's creative acrylic paintings and evocative, cool-toned sketches of the terns, sea, land, and sky are executed on wood and altered digitally to take advantage of the wood-grain textures in backgrounds and negative spaces. A helpful world map in the corner of many spreads orients readers to the tern's location at each point in the journey. Finally reaching the pack ice of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, the bird will enjoy summer in the south before traveling back again to her Arctic breeding ground. The main narrative centers on the flight; to learn more about the tern's life cycle, feeding, and reproduction, readers can consult the informative endnotes and suggested resources. Danielle J. Ford July/August 2022 p.144(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.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Hevron traces an Arctic tern's annual 60,000-mile round trip from Greenland to Antarctica and back. Marking the route with dotted lines on simplified maps, the author depicts and describes her young bird's wandering flight, which she bills as the longest of any animal, and imagined but likely experiences along the way--pausing for a rest in Tenerife, winging over flamingos in Liberia, following a "raft" of macaroni penguins to the Crozet Islands--to an Antarctic summer on pack ice in the Weddell Sea and then back, riding prevailing winds northward. Aside from one stylized glimpse of a ship in heavy seas, there is no visible sign of human activity, but Hevron does mention twice that the ocean waters from which the tern snatches krill and other food are "ever-warming," then notes in the backmatter how rising temperatures drive those sources of nourishment to less accessible depths and also lead to seasonal storms severe enough to endanger nesting grounds. The backmatter also includes more information about this bird's life cycle (Arctic terns can live for 30 years and so "fly the equivalent of three times to the Moon and back") and generous lists of resources for further information.(This book was reviewed digitally.) Well-deserved recognition for a migratory avian superstar. (Informational picture book. 7-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
