School Library Journal Starred Review

Gr 3-6--An artist's readable narrative accompanies her accomplished drawings in this slim, colorful volume. Wright-Frierson invites readers to spend a day in her company, savoring the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest. She presents a dawn to dusk panorama in a profusion of watercolor sketches and a brief, conversational text. While calling to mind Jennifer Dewey's Night and Day in the Desert (Little, 1991) or Joyce Powzyk's Wallaby Creek (Lothrop, 1985), this artist's sketchbook is intensely personal. Her goal is not scientific depth, though the snippets of information may well entice the intellectually curious to conduct further investigations. Rather, her "scrapbook" serves to give a rich impression of a unique ecological environment: a feel for a landscape of compelling extremes and the creatures who have adapted to meet its unforgiving demands. Admirably done.--Patricia Manning, Eastchester Public Library, NY

ALA Booklist

for reading aloud. This is a lovely tribute to the Sonoran Desert by an author-illustrator who has spent many hours observing and sketching there. Writing in the first person, Wright-Frierson describes the many sights she has seen on her rambles and includes handsome watercolors of animals, insects, and plants, as well as tinier pieces of the desert's landscape, such as quail eggs, butterfly wings, a prickly pear pad, and even cottontail droppings. The picture-book format makes this accessible to younger children as well as middle-graders who might use it for school reports. Highly evocative and quite beautiful, this will give readers a real sense of the desert and what is hidden just below its expansive surface. (Reviewed Aug. 1996)

Horn Book

The activities of desert life and the variety of species adapted to this hostile and seemingly dead habitat are followed in a one-day description. Watercolors showing the narrator out in the desert are accompanied by close-up drawings of seeds, feathers, and cactus spines. Illustrations showing photos and sketches reinforce the idea of a scrapbook in the making, in this personal look at the desert.

Kirkus Reviews

Subtitled ``Dawn to Dusk in the Sonoran Desert,'' this is a fascinating personal introduction to the ecology of a desert. In her first solo effort, Wright-Frierson (illustrator of Sheila Cole's When the Tide Is Low, 1985, among others) organizes her book as a series of dawn-to-dusk, sketchbook impressions made during many trips to the desert for observation and watercolor painting. The vivid text takes the form of involving first-person journal entries that accompany accurate, beautiful watercolors of the desert (in one, she includes her own hands sketching in a notebook as part of the illustration). Roadrunners, tortoises, jackrabbits, snakes, elf owls, and woodpeckers are just a few of the animals observed and documented in their habitat, while Saguaro cactus, creosote, acacia, prickly pear, and mesquite fill each page. There is much to enjoy, but the first lessons to absorb are on becoming careful, consistent investigators of nature. Exemplary science writing. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-9)"

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

These companion volumes explore a North Carolina barrier island and Arizona's Sonoran Desert, respectively. Commenting that copious pencil sketches, spot drawings, simulated photos and handwritten notes give the books the look of a scrapbook, <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW said of <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Island that "Wright-Frierson's love of nature and talent as a watercolorist shine forth." Ages 6-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(May)