Flowers Are Pretty ... Weird! (Nature's Top Secrets) - Hardcover

Mosco, Rosemary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0735265941 ISBN 13: 9780735265943

Publisher: Tundra Books, 2022

Synopsis

Warning -- this book contains top-secret information about flowers! Prepare to be shocked and weirded out by this hilarious and totally true picture book introduction to some of nature's strangest plants.

Flowers are beautiful. They have bright colors, soft petals and sweet nectar. Yum! But that's not the whole truth. Flowers can be WEIRD . . . and one bee is here to let everyone know! Talking directly to the reader, a bee reveals how flowers are so much stranger than what we think. Did you know that there are some flowers that only bloom in the nighttime? Some flowers are spooky, and look like ghosts, or bats, or a monster's mouth. And while most flowers smell good, there are some that smell like dead meat, or even horse poop!

This hilarious and refreshing book with silly and sweet illustrations explores the science of flowers and shows that these plants are not always stereotypically pretty and harmless as we often think they are -- they are fascinating, disgusting, complicated and amazing.

About this title

About the Author

ROSEMARY MOSCO makes books, articles, cartoons and graphics that connect people with the natural world. Her nature comics were the subject of an award-winning museum exhibit and are collected in a book that was a 2019 ALA Great Graphic Novel for Teens. She co-wrote the New York Times bestseller The Atlas Obscura Explorer's Guide for the World's Most Adventurous Kid. She speaks at birding festivals and nature centers and writes for Audubon.

JACOB SOUVA has a beautiful wife, two amazing sons and resides in a small countryside community in upstate New York. He loves to make kids laugh and think with his illustrations. Jacob sketches constantly and finishes his work digitally, placing a lot of emphasis on simple shapes, color and lots and lots of texture. Jacob has illustrated several picture books including The Boy with Big, Big Feelings and Pedro's Pan.

Reviews

PreS-Gr 2—A bee shares its favorite things about flowers in a fun scrapbook format. Using wordplay ("Bee honest" and "bee-lieving") and puns galore, a bee explains how flowers are both wonderful and weird. In fact, flowers are opposites in many ways: they can be big or small, pretty or ugly, edible or poisonous. The informative words are accompanied by pretty textured illustrations, such as a smiling monkey orchid. The text is center formatted with important points enlarged, in bold, or in bold italics. Generous white space will also help emerging readers, who will especially enjoy how the bee's written asides add flavor. For example, one picture is labeled "Bee Butt LOL" and clarified with "not me." Most of the illustrations take up the full spread, with pretend snapshots framed with tape. Some of the stranger flowers in the book are highlighted at the back with more details, but this isn't a book for research. Those who enjoy the playful narrators of Paul Meisel's My Awesome Summer by P. Mantis and Bethany Barton's I'm Trying to Love Spiders will find a lot to appreciate here. VERDICT Both educational and humorous, this is highly recommended.—Elissa Cooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Tundra Books
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0735265941
• ISBN 13: 9780735265943
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Souva Jacob
• Number of pages: 36