Little brown nut

Welcoming and engaging, the Start Small, Think Big series (2 titles) does a particularly nice job of tracing the life cycle of flora and fauna, while also placing it within a larger environmental context. These UK imports are amiably narrated by their subjects (a nut and a baby bird) as they grow and mature into their adult forms. Little, Brown Nut follows a Brazil nut in a South American rain forest as it falls from its parent tree, is buried by an agouti, sprouts roots, and eventually grows to towering heights. Of particular note is the spread showing the different rain-forest layers and the new tree's position therein. The real wow-factor appears in each book's final spread, which folds out into a four-page display that includes a map, an illustrated recap of the plant or animal life cycle, an "I-Spy" feature that sends kids back through the book, and a "Think Big!" box of big-picture facts.

In an invitation to "Think Big," a fallen Brazil nut explains where it came from and what it will grow into. In Amazon rainforest settings that teem with flora and fauna, Auld and Cooper follow the nut as it is buried and forgotten by an agouti ("like a guinea pig, but with longer legs"), then germinates and over many years grows into a majestic tree that houses wildlife from tiny Brazil-nut poison frogs to harpy eagles. Adding additional details delivered in smaller type to join the nutty narrator, the author describes how the flowers, which have evolved to be accessible only to female orchid bees, are pollinated and become nuts that fall either to grow, to be eaten by animals, or to be gathered by human "castañeros"--who also protect their livelihoods by helping to protect the trees from illegal loggers. The Brazil nut tree is a "rainforest superstar," she concludes on a foldout page at the end, and can live for a thousand years if allowed. The same foldout features maps of rainforests worldwide, as well as images of animals that appeared in previous scenes for readers to go back and spot. Nutritious and digestible, just like its narrator. (Informational picture book. 6-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.