Plant Attack!: The Fascinating Ways Flora Defends Itself

by Erin Silver, Julie McLaughlin (Illustrator)

Overview

Just like people and animals, plants need to defend themselves.

They can't scream or run away from danger, but many have developed surprisingly cool and courageous ways to keep themselves safe from pesky bugs, hungry animals and even large-clawed crabs. Plants can stab, poison, drown and even suffocate their predators. Discover the corpse flower, which smells like a combination of rotting wounds, garlic, cheese and sour sweat. Then there is the touch-me-not balsam that explodes, flinging anything that touches it through the air. Plant Attack! The Fascinating Ways Flora Defend Themselves explores 15 different plants and the unique, and sometimes bizarre, ways they defend themselves from predators, including us.

Praise for Erin Silver:

★"Enthralling...Empowers readers to understand their own human coping mechanisms, while colorful, detailed images soaked in softly muted earth tones build a base of strong general knowledge. The challenge for readers young and old will be to see who says 'ew' first! A thoroughly engaging, fact-filled book with audacious and memorable animal responses to predators. A must-have for every library."—School Library Journal, starred review for Mighty Scared

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459837973
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	03/11/2025
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.75(w) x 10.75(h) x 0.31(d)
Lexile:	NC980L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Erin Silver is an award-winning children’s author. Her books include Just Watch Me (Crystal Kite Award nominee), What Kids Did: Stories of Kindness and Invention in the Time of COVID-19 (Hackmatack Award nominee), Proud to Play: Canadian LGBTQ+ Athletes Who Made History, Rush Hour: Navigating Our Global Traffic Jam (Blueberry Award winner), Sitting Shiva (OLA Best Bets, Vine Award finalist, TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award finalist) and Good Food, Bad Waste: Let’s Eat for the Planet (2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books finalist). Erin was chosen to tour during Canadian Children’s Book Week in 2023 and is a sought-after speaker at schools, libraries and conferences. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction and a postgraduate journalism degree. Erin lives in Toronto.

Julie McLaughlin is an award-winning illustrator of numerous children's books, including Pride Puppy, Little Cloud, Plant Attack!, Breaking News and Why We Live Where We Live, winner of the 2015 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. Her work with various editorial, advertising and publishing clients can be seen around the world. Julie grew up on the Prairies and now resides on Vancouver Island.

Editorial Reviews

Digitally created illustrations are bold, bright and animated, allowing readers to imagine the plants in their typical habitat. Cartoon-style drawings also give them ‘personalities’ to go along with the kid-friendly plant POV paragraphs, a strategy that may help kids remember specific plant attributes. A good introduction to a fascinating aspect of plant biology, highlighting characteristics that many may know little about. Highly recommended.”

CM: Canadian Review of Materials

Readers are made aware of 13 plant species and the defense mechanisms they have to protect themselves when faced with danger…Some plants are familiar and others not so. It's always fun to learn something new.”

Sal's Fiction Addiction

2024-12-28
When danger looms, plants get tough.

Silver offers a companion book toMighty Scared: The Amazing Ways Animals Defend Themselves (2024), introducing readers to plant defenses, the fiercer the better. From roses with sharp prickles (distinguished from thorns in the glossary) to invasive hydrillas, aquatic plants that keep sunlight from the fish beneath, she highlights 13 species whose defenses she finds “cool and courageous.” She covers stinking corpse flowers, exploding pods on touch-me-not balsams, and Venus flytraps, with their snapping jaws. On each spread, she examines a different plant, providing a short expository paragraph describing its defense, a “fierce fact,” and a slangy “Get To Know Me” section narrated by the plant. The actual information is rather skimpy and occasionally inaccurate. Silver doesn’t always note where these plants can be found. She notes that poison ivy vines grow between one and four feet tall, when in fact they can grow up into the tree canopy. And while a diagram refers to the clear liquid in coconuts as milk, it’s in fact water (milk is made from the flesh). McLaughlin’s bright and lively digital illustrations depict all the plants on the opening spread. At times, the artwork personifies both flora and fauna, to readers’ delight. Diverse humans can be seen interacting with the plants. A final spread compares some of these defenses with ways that humans protect themselves, though the examples are a bit of a stretch.

Entertaining and modestly informative.(Informational picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews