(1) K-3 Hale (Water Land, rev. 7/18) introduces readers to biomimicry through fifteen examples found in everyday life as well as state-of-the-art design and engineering. Each left-hand page features a tanka poem paired with a relief print illustration of a plant or animal; on the right, a captioned photograph of a human-made creation showcases the biomimicry involved. So "lotus leaf spreads wide / waxy surface repels rain" faces a photo of a child with an umbrella; and "shy armadillo / overlapping scales rolled tight / a snug little ball / folds up so efficiently" precedes a picture of a fold-up, space-saving car. Hale's accessible tanka poems pack a lot into five lines. The softness of her detailed relief prints effectively contrasts with photographs highlighting human invention. Extensive back matter includes additional information for each example, a detailed explanation of the tanka format, and numerous source notes.

Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2022

(1) PS Hale's got a clever premise here--a this-­is-how-I-get-to-school picture book ­written entirely with prepositional phrases that combine a direction or position with a location. The title page kicks things off as a young girl, backpack on shoulders and lunchbox in hand, heads "out the door." With a page-turn, "down the stoop" she goes, trailed by her briefcase-toting dad. It's a fall day, and yellow leaves speckle the street and sidewalks in the textured collage illustrations. Deftly capturing the pace and rhythm of the pair's morning commute, Hale shows the girl contentedly leading the way, ­swinging her bright yellow lunchbox in the air. Soon, her father catches up, so they can hold hands before they walk "across the street." Signs for the F train and Carroll Street station clue readers in to the story's Brooklyn setting. Seek-and-find opportunities pop up, especially in subway scenes, where readers can spot the twosome "below the ground" and "amid the crowd." (The girl's fire-engine-red jacket helps.) After the girl reaches her ­destination--a cheerful classroom of children with a variety of skin tones--the story fast-forwards to the end of the school day, and a series of mini-illustrations traces the return trip home. It's a perfect back-to-school book, a warm-hearted chronicle of a daily routine, and an appealing introduction to directional and positional prepositions.

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2021

(2) 4-6 In the 1930s, the Mexican American community in Lemon Grove, California, organized to bring a lawsuit against the school board--"the first successful school desegregation case"--after the board secretly commissioned building an inferior school to segregate Mexican American children. The third-person text, in both Spanish and English, is told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Roberto. Hale skillfully uses such visual techniques as large halo shapes and split panels to depict the unfolding events while also highlighting aspects of everyday life in this small agricultural town. Bib.

Reviewer: Lettycia Terrones | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2019

(1) K-3 Die-cuts serve useful and playful purpose in this blue- and beige-colored introduction to Earth's various meetings of water and landforms. A boy fishes on a pond while a girl plays ashore; turn the page, and the pond becomes an island where the girl is stranded. The cleverness continues as a bay becomes a cape, a strait an isthmus, etc., with funny little human dramas to encourage close examination.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2018

(1) PS Fifteen childhood building projects are deftly rendered in concrete poems and mixed-media collages, each paired with a photo of an iconic building bearing a resemblance. A toddler's upside-down stack of graduated plastic doughnuts look like Wright's Guggenheim Museum; a snowball igloo mirrors a sample shelter for living on Mars. Hale suggests that using what's at hand to "dream up" new things is vital to creativity.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2013

(3) K-3 Sculptor-designer Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), son of a Japanese father and an American mother, found inspiration in the cultures of both parents. Accompanied by handsome mixed-media compositions, the poetic text tells how Noguchi, while still a boy, helped create a house that was "half Eastern, half Western in design...a mixture like his own." An endnote supplies photographs and information about Noguchi's life and work. Bib.

Reviewer: Martha Sibert