Bird Books Worth Singing About
RSSLuann Toth, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 09/22/2009
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There is much to learn from the industrious and resourceful bird and no matter where you live there are abundant numbers of colorful (and sometimes melodious) species to observe. Encourage your students to go outside and write about or sketch the winged creatures they see. Back inside, share these recent titles with the young naturalists.
Irene Kelly’s Even an Ostrich Needs a Nest (Holiday House, 2009; K-Gr 3) looks at a global array of birds, big and small, and describes gigantic nests made from layered sticks and tiny cup-shaped homes lined with spider silk and lichen. Kelly’s engaging artwork—in pen and ink, watercolor, gouache, and acrylic—depicts the diversity of materials and construction of a variety of nests. Whether on the forest floor, on mud flats, or high in treetops or bridges, these amazingly and strong structures provide protection and a safe haven for the next generation of birds to grow and mature.
With brilliant, sharp-focus photos and a succinct text, Pamela F. Kirby’s What Bluebirds Do (Boyds Mills, 2009; K-Gr 4) documents the comings and goings of a pair of Eastern Bluebirds as they pick the perfect spot in the author’s backyard, make the nesting box their own, hatch their eggs, and raise their young. Thanks to the adult birds’ expert parenting skills, the five babies thrive and grow…and finally fledge and learn to live on their own. Readers are privy to this miraculous cycle made all the more exciting with the immediacy of the life-size photos.
April Pulley Sayre’s Honk, Honk, Goose! (Holt, 2009; K-Gr 2), illustrated with Huy Voun Lee’s gorgeous collage art, follows two Canada geese as they find a nesting place and start a family. The female lays her eggs and sits on them until they hatch 28 days later. All the while the male goose stands guard and honks away intruders, continuing his protective role until the chicks are a year old.
Melissa Stewart’s A Place for Birds (Peachtree, 2009; Gr 2-4), with colorful, naturalistic paintings by Higgins Bond, introduces readers to a wide variety of North American birds and the ecosystems that support them. The author also addresses how human conservation and protection efforts—from preventing oil spills and setting aside areas during nesting seasons to keeping pet cats indoors and dimming the lights in skyscrapers during the migration season—can improve their survival rates. This is a look at the important role of birds in the food chain and how these creatures help plants, other animals, and humans, too.
In Michael J. Rosen’s The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Bird Poems (Candlewick, 2009; Gr 3 Up), illustrated with stunning watercolors by Stan Fellows, readers meet
20 common American birds via a quintessential characteristic or telling detail. The Northern Cardinal is described: “first feeders at dawn/paired like red quotation marks/last feeds at dusk” and its song: “what cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer.” Part poetry book, part field guide, this is a lyrical look at our natural landscape.
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Birds (Henkes) © 2009 |
And last, but not least, is Kevin Henkes’s Birds (Greenwillow, 2009; PreS-Gr 1), with brilliant paintings by Laura Dronek. In simple terms and with a keen childlike sensibility, a youngster describes what she knows and learns from observing the avian life around her. She recognizes its diversity in color, size, and shape and notices collective and individual bird behaviors throughout the seasons. This is a bright and lovely picture book worth crowing about.
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Birds (Henkes) © 2009 by Laura Dronek |
