Review by Booklist Review
Focusing on a seldom-covered aspect of animals, this dreamy work looks at animals' skulls, forming a guessing game along the way. The detailed digital artwork, with soft purple skies and forest colors, shows a group of children on a nature walk. They find a clean, bone-white animal skull along the way, and short text draws attention to one of its features: "See this opening, filled with labyrinths of bone? These bone scrolls formed my nose's warm chambers." What could it be? How the animal used that skull feature comes next: "I smelled ripe apples and followed that scent down from the hillside." It's a deer! Finally, there's a look at the whole body in action. Readers who enjoy matter-of-fact explorations of science will enjoy guessing the animals and looking at how evolution has created different skull shapes that support behavior variations. Back matter, including a short further-reading list but no source notes, labels the parts of a human skull and offers more detailed information about the animal skulls in the book. An unusual, informative choice for science shelves.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Horn Book Review
Hocker reminds readers that there is more to nature than a casual glance affords. When a group of child and adult hikers discovers an animal skull, they are prompted to consider what they can deduce from examining it, for this natural relic has a story to tell. "A skull speaks in arches and ridges and caverns of bones. It speaks in teeth and cracks, and holes into, and holes through. It says: I was." Readers turn the page and examine the skull (enlarged from the previous page's illustration), noting the two large openings where eyes once were, eyes that defined this creature as a "watcher." Donovan's full-bleed digital art on the next double-page spread depicts a lynx spotting a rabbit while hunting at twilight. This pattern continues, introducing a deer, a beaver, a hummingbird, a wolf, and an owl: shades of blue outlined in black display each animal's skull, text describes a prominent feature, and the animal is seen in its habitat employing this feature. Extensive back matter utilizes both text and a labeled illustration of a human skull to define features such as orbits, the cranium, and the mandible; additional attributes of the six skulls discussed in the main text; and resources for further inquiry. Once readers catch on to the unusual device of narrators being a succession of animal skulls, the text flows smoothly, and both the facts presented and the plea to appreciate the multiple ways nature speaks to us are clear. Betty CarterJanuary/February 2024 p.112 (c) Copyright 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
An invitation to contemplate what animal skulls can reveal about their previous users' senses and behaviors. Donovan's carefully detailed skulls, most placed on the ground in outdoorsy settings, make it easy to follow Hocker's beautifully penned poetic references ("I tasted bark, then heartwood / heard sticks snap as the tree fell"). In the backmatter, readers will find more expansive descriptions of what the size and placement of these skulls' "arches and ridges and caverns of bone" might suggest about the eyes, noses, and diets of the six once-living creatures, from lynx to hummingbird, that appear in the flesh on alternating spreads. There's also a seventh bony image here: human, with major parts labeled, following earlier views of young observers with brown skin intact and their crania still protecting minds able to think and discover. (The author's remark that "you can learn your father's language and your grandmother's too" obliquely hints at Native American roots for at least one of the children.) The ontological title, which does double duty as a running refrain, encourages more philosophical reflection, as does a closing claim that "just like you," animals also have "thoughts and memories, curiosity, intelligence, and consciousness." Heady lessons in reasoning from evidence, with food for deeper thought. (resource list) (Informational picture book. 7-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
