The title’s ebullient appearance is helped along by the typography: The jobs’ names are set in all caps, printed in color and in a larger font than the surrounding text, and emphasized with exclamation points. For example, an environmental scientist “helps take care of our world,” and a zoologist is defined as someone who “studies how animals behave.” Scientists in general are identified as those who “study, learn, and solve problems.” Such basic language not only benefits youngsters, but also offers adults sharing the book easy vocabulary with which to expand on conversations with kids about the professions. The simple text presents the sometimes-long, tongue-twisting career names while helpfully defining them in comprehensible terms. Plump-cheeked, wide-eyed tykes with various skin and hair colors introduce different professions, including zoologist, meteorologist, aerospace engineer, and environmental scientist, depicted with cues to tip readers off to what the jobs entail. If they haven’t already thought about their futures (and they probably haven’t), toddlers and preschoolers might start planning after perusing this cheerful first guide to scientific careers. The backmatter uses spot art to highlight the parts of a sunflower seed and plant and four things that “the seed needs to sprout” it also includes a diagram of the sunflower’s life cycle.Īn understated, useful primer on one of nature’s miraculous cycles. Youngsters will feel a sense of awe as they witness the magic of a seed’s first tender shoot and the symbiosis of nature. The book offers a close-up look at plant reproduction using simple, accessible language that preschoolers can understand. The flower produces seeds, which are dispersed by birds after they feed, beginning the process of new plant growth all over again. Readers watch as sunshine and rain help the seed grow into a bud and then a tall flower whose grandeur and height are accentuated by a switch from a horizontal page layout to a vertical one.
Except for a few well-chosen double-page illustrations, the full-color artwork appears on the recto pages while the text appears on the verso pages. The entire text consists of one long sentence, broken up into fragments across the book’s spreads. Using her signature minimalist prose and stripped-down art, Portis follows the journey of a sunflower seed from the moment it “settles into the soil” to its emergence as a blossom that eventually parents new sunflower plants. A piecemeal overview of the life cycle of a plant.
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