Full Circle: Creation, Migration, and Coming Home

by Elisa Boxer, Vivian Mineker (Illustrator)

Overview

This lyrical adventure follows the bluefin tuna, puffin, sea turtle, and Atlantic salmon through their life cycle. Each of these special species has a characteristic called natal homing. They're born, leave home to eat and mate, and then return to precisely where they were born to start their own families. This is a scientific look at these animals' habits—but includes a parallel story reflecting humans' own tendency to return home.

Science and nature backmatter includes additional information on the included animals as well as an author's note.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534112810
Publisher:	Sleeping Bear Press
Publication date:	07/01/2024
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	594,304
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 11.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	660L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 7 Years

About the Author

Vivian Mineker is a freelance illustrator whose work can be found in the picture books All Cats Welcome and The Little Coven. Nature is one of her biggest sources of inspiration, especially when she's on a walk with her dog, Darlie. Born in Taiwan and raised in Portland, Oregon, Vivian now makes her home in Amsterdam.

Elisa Boxer is an Emmy and Murrow award winning journalist whose work has been featured in publications including The New York Times and Fast Company. She has reported for newspapers, magazines and TV stations, and has been working on this book ever since coming back home to Maine for her first job in television news in 1996. She is the author of numerous acclaimed nonfiction picture books, including The Voice That Won the Vote, and SPLASH!: Ethelda Bleibtrey Makes Waves of Change (a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection). Elisa lives in Maine and has more children’s books on the way.

Editorial Reviews

…colorful illustrations enhance the survey of natal homing

Midwest Book Reviews

2024-08-30
Boxer brings her storytelling prowess to bear on the animal world.

The author provides an easy-to-understand account of the cycle that brings some animals back to their birthplaces to breed, while also drawing parallels with human lives. Spread by spread, she describes egg laying, birth, and migration among salmon, puffins, bluefin tuna, and sea turtles. Mineker’s expressive illustrations depict the animals in appropriate landscapes. Most spreads also include an expectant human couple preparing for the birth of their baby. As the animals grow, so does the human infant. A young puffin “hobbles along the rocky cliff” before its first flight; the baby takes those first few tentative steps. As a baby bluefin tuna learns to swim fast to avoid orcas, the human child figures out how to balance on a bicycle. When the salmon begins its journey back home to mate and lay eggs, the child, now all grown up, is shown between two proud parents, wearing a graduation gown and displaying a diploma. Finally, after all four animals return home to lay eggs, the young adult comes back, holding a new baby as the gray-haired parents look on proudly. In the informative text, repetitive phrases detail each stage, enhancing the point that natal homing—animals’ ability to find their way back to their birthplace—is something many creatures share. One of the human parents and the child are brown-skinned; the other parent is lighter-skinned.

Readers will want to return to this gentle, effective account. (author’s note, further information)(Informational picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews