Crossings: Extraordinary Structures for Extraordinary Animals

PreS-Gr 2—The refrain "over, under, across, and through" carries readers through this picture book depicting unique animal crossings. Each page features different animal families using human-made structures built specifically for them; these structures allow the families to travel through habitats that have been altered by human transportation routes. Realistic digital illustrations rendered in saturated brown, blue, green, and yellow tones capture movement and use bold angles and dynamic lines. A pair of coyotes trot over a freeway, a mama elephant and her baby amble under a busy street, monkeys climb across a rope bridge, and a penguin family waddles through a tunnel. Tender moments between parents and their young (a Florida panther shields her cubs from headlights veering toward them) are balanced by portrayals of animal families cheerfully playing in and using the crossings. Small blocks of informational text are included throughout the simple narrative. A final page contains additional information about animal crossings around the world. VERDICT An important, positive conservation message, and a perfect nonfiction addition to preschool story time or a beginning informational picture book collection.—Amy Fellows, Multnomah County Library, OR

Directional concepts get an ecological twist in this book celebrating passages engineered for wildlife in habitats disrupted by human development. "A bull elk picks his way through evergreens OVER a noisy Canadian highway.// A mama elephant thunders UNDER a crowded Kenyan road." Each animal and its human-constructed crossing receives a dedicated spread, calling out how it moves over, under, across, or through, while a small caption offers additional details: "The Trans-Canada Highway is home to more than forty wildlife overpasses and underpasses." Though Duffield rightly lauds human ingenuity in aiding animals ("Opening their minds and their hearts, they work to find ideas, answers") the book only indirectly catalogs the irrevocable ways that human development disrupts habitats. With an appealing softness, Orodán's pencil illustrations, finished in Photoshop, use light and shadow to show the constructed passages' depth. A picture book for the Anthropocene. Ages 3-8. (Oct.)