Tag: Juvenile Nonfic

by Bobbie Kalman and Tammy Everts

My daughter chose this cute book about cats at the library. Everyone knows of lions and tigers, but what about servals, ocelots and the jaguarundi? Little Cats is a bright, cheerful book of fun facts on the small cats, from domestic housecats to wildcats and even pumas and cheetahs, which are not classified with the big cats (because they can\’t roar, among other things). I like how the book continually compares things a child will recognize from their pet kitty with similar behaviors or traits the wild cats have. It mentions the different kinds of places cats live (both wild and domestic), what they eat, how they hide and raise their families. The second half of the book features eleven small wild cat species with a brief description highlighting their distinctive features:  lynxes and bobcats have tufted ears and short tails, ocelots pluck the feathers before they eat a bird, the fishing cat has webbed toes for swimming, etc. The final page mentions that many wild cats are endangered from poaching and habitat loss, also that pet cats have the opposite trouble: overpopulation. I thought it was kind of odd that the photo descriptions are listed at the very back; and as my daughter wanted me to read them all (I had to guess to identify some of the cats while reading) I had to flip back and forth from every page to match up the descriptions with their pictures for her. It does keep the layout looking very clean and tidy though, not having them included in the main body. If you have a young child who likes cats, this little book is very appealing!

Rating: 3/5 …….. 32 pages, 1994

Animals, animals
by Marc Tyler Nobleman

Another short, fact-packed animal book for kids. On foxes! I love foxes. They\’re so cool and clever and beautiful. I think part of what intrigues me about them is that they\’re a canine with many feline traits- the big triangle ears, super-sensitive hearing, vertical pupils. According to this book, one species, the gray fox, can even retract its claws to keep them sharp (it can also climb trees). Foxes describes how the animals live, their physical features, life cycle and distribution of six of the twenty-three different species: red fox, gray fox, arctic fox, fennec fox, kit or swift fox and bat-eared fox. The final little chapter tells how some red foxes have adapted to live in cities. The only thing I would have wished for this book is some better pictures. Most of the photos are really nice, but some of the ones highlighting a species (like the arctic fox, fennec and gray fox) only show the face. When looking at varieties among species I like to see the different body shapes and proportions (but maybe that\’s just me).

Rating: 3/5 …….. 45 pages, 2007

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Animal Prey
by Sandra Markle

I\’m in kind of an easy-animal-book-reading spate. I picked up a small armload of them at the library last time and find they make enjoyable quick reads when I need a break from the more tedious and brain-aching book Plenitude.

Anyhow, this one is about zebras. The focus is on them as prey animals, so although the storyline mostly follows one little zebra\’s life from birth through his first migration and into adulthood, a lot of it is about how the zebras avoid predators. It is illustrated what strategies they do (or don\’t) have against lions, cheetahs and crocodiles. Sometimes the zebras escape, others aren\’t so lucky. You might want to look at the book yourself first if you\’re considering reading it to a younger or more sensitive child. One zebra is shown with gaping, bleeding wounds on its side from a lion attack, another is shown getting killed, then eaten by scavengers. Facts of life, but maybe a bit too graphic for some. Overall the book is really informative and the photos are spectacular.

Rating: 3/5 ……..40 pages, 2007

I was curious to see if I could identify the kinds of dinosaurs I sketched once when using my daughter\’s toys as models. I was pretty sure they were all based on real dinosaur species. So I brought home a bunch of library books on dinosaurs to peruse. (Ended up finding all the dinosaurs except one). And since I had them at home, and they have such cool pictures, I figured I\’d read some and learn a little bit. Here\’s the first three (most of them are kid\’s books, as I guess it\’s usually children who are interested in learning about dinosaurs).

Dinosaurs: Herbivores by Dougal Dixon

This book describes many different groups of plant-eating dinosaurs: early sauropods (the long-necked ones), ornithopods (which ran upright on long birdlike toes), iguanodons (first discovered in 1822), duckbilled dinosaurs, stegosaurus and his relatives, nodosaurids with spikes, ankylosaurids with club tails, the pachycephalosaurids which had bony heads (probably used for butting each other like goats) and the parrot-beaked dinosaurs (including triceratops). It has many hand-drawn illustrations as well as pictures of the bones. I really liked all the little side facts which showed things scientists know about their body structures: how the dinosaurs carried their weight, what the shape of their teeth tells us, how speculation continues about the arrangement of stegosaurus\’ plates (they were attached to muscle, not bone: were they moveable?) There was even a sauropod with long spikes on its neck, which I never heard of before! One small confusing thing about this book was its arrangement; each spread has a main block of text with smaller illustrations and descriptions surrounding it. On some spreads the main text block was on the right-hand page which threw me off for a second because I\’m used to reading beginning on the left side. This arrangement alternated rather inconsistently, too.

Bizarre Dinosaurs by Christopher Sloan

This book is just plain fun and fascinating. It highlights eleven specific dinosaurs that have features scientists are still puzzling over. We don\’t know their function, but they sure are strange and cool to look at! There\’s a stegosaurid with long spikes jutting out of its shoulders, a little tree-climbing dinosaur with one extra-long finger like an aye-aye, and a sauropod with a funny wide mouth full of tiny, comb-like teeth. I thought it was really cool to read about how scientists made a model of the bony structure atop parasaurolophus\’ head and blew air through it, discovering that it makes noise like a horn! And did you know there\’s a dinosaur called Dracorex hogwartsia? That\’s right, a dinosaur (discovered in 2006) named after Harry Potter\’s school! It has such a fierce-looking bumpy and spiky skull someone thought it looked like a dragon. This book is illustrated with computer-generated models which I love looking at because of the minute details and realistic textures.

Triceratops and Other Horned Plant-Eaters by Virginia Schomp

Unlike the other two books, which just state plain facts, this one is told in a kind of storylike fashion, imagining to the reader how ceratopsian species of dinosaurs might have lived. Did they live in herds for protection? did they use their horns for sparring with each other, or just fighting off predators? What I liked most about this book were all the illustrations showing different kinds of ceratops, the family group that includes triceratops. Some of these dinosaurs had huge, tall neck shields with studs all around the edge. Some had forward-pointing horns, others long spikes on the back of the shield. One had a curious nose horn that curved forward and down. And there was a little primitive ceratops with no horns and a small neck shield, whose face looks rather like a parrot (at least in this picture). I\’m fascinated by all the different forms and shapes they took.

One of the things I enjoy most about all these books is, of course, the pictures. We don\’t know what color dinosaurs were, so the artists are left to create that aspect of the dinosaurs. Some give them dull colors but focus on the textured hide. Others give them wild bright stripes and spots, speckles and fancy bold patterns. It\’s fun to see how different they can look just by being dressed up in colors and stripes. There is one dinosaur we now know the color of, and I wonder if in the future every dinosaur\’s colors will be as well-known as triceratops\’ three-horned profile, making future generations look back with amusement on our fantastical creations when we painted their hides.

Anyhow, if you have a kid who\’s interested in dinosaurs, look for some of these books at the library! They\’re lots of fun and very interesting. I know I learned a lot!

Animals Under Threat
by Richard Spilsbury

My daughter is in a phase of wanting to read only \”true books\” with facts in them \”so I can learn stuff.\” Thus she picked out a stack of j nonfiction featuring animals. Some of them are a bit above her level, so they take us a while to work through. We\’ve been reading this book together for the past week. I would say it\’s written for kids over eight, the language can be a bit dry and technical and we had to pause many times on each page for me to explain things and answer questions. There certainly was a lot to learn about!

The book describes the needs of tigers, what kinds of habitat and prey will support them. My daughter liked reading about their physical attributes and how baby tigers grow up. She was dismayed when the book talked about how tigers are killed for their skins and body parts (used in traditional medicines) but then it goes on to explain what measures are being taken against poachers- banning the sale of tiger parts, protection in tiger reserves, etc. The book ends on a more positive note, discussing what is being done to help tigers- how zoos and conservation groups help, how tourism affects tigers (both good and bad) and even what individuals can do for tigers. There is also a section that tells how tigers were hunted historically, and mentions Jim Corbett; how he used to hunt man-eating tigers but then grew to appreciate their beauty and turned to photographing and filming them instead. Altogether this a very information-packed book for kids, with stunning photos that kept my young listener attentive when the text got too advanced for her.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 48 pages, 2004

How to Find and Care for Animals of the Wood, Field, and Stream
by Roy Pinney

During several visits to a local thrift shop, I saw this old book sitting on the shelf. I was curious enough about it that I finally brought it home, even though it\’s tattered (the spine was falling off). This is a sort of children\’s manual for catching and keeping wild birds, insects and small mammals as pets. It tells how to find the animals in their own habitats, and methods used to catch them- pretty much anything from tadpoles and bats to rabbits and young hawks. Then describes how to make proper enclosures- I thought this was the coolest part. The book shows how to build a cage yourself, by wiring cake-cooling racks together; how to make an ant farm using two panes of glass, wood strips and tape, or how to set up a terrarium or make a jar a home for bugs (my daughter\’s own hobby!) It mentions several times the importance of giving proper care to any animals you keep- with particular instructions for the various species. Also explains clearly that some wild animals are never suitable to try and bring home- like bear cubs or poisonous snakes! – and emphasizes always checking to make sure it is legal in your state before trying to catch and keep most animals. I can\’t think a creature like a raccoon would make a good pet, and I never heard of anyone having a pet armadillo or prairie dog! but some of the animals described in the \”exotics\” section, like chinchillas, I\’ve seen available in the pet store. There is also a part about putting up bird-feeders, or tempting deer close to the house with salt licks so you can observe them. The longest sections (a few pages each) describe snakes, frogs and turtles, and I particularly liked reading about flying squirrels. A very interesting little book! One I surely would have tried to put into practice as a kid.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 68 pages, 1959

by William White

After reading those two books about sea turtles, I remembered I had another turtle book on my own shelf. This one came to me from a library sale somewhere. I didn\’t expect much of it, as it\’s a pretty old book, published before I was born (ye gads!) I thought the information would be brief, out-of-date and lacking in scope.

Well, it was actually pretty interesting. There was a lot of info packed in here, especially about what goes on inside of turtles. It shows how turtles breathe, and how their respiratory and digestive systems work. (This was partly disturbing, as the illustrations were actual photographs of turtles being dissected. Poor quality photos, too, so not only were they gross-looking, but also difficult to tell what you\’re looking at! I think a well-drawn diagram would have worked better). I was fascinated by the series of photos that show how a turtle embryo develops inside the egg (but again, disturbed by the fact- admitted in the text- that they peeled the shell off eggs in various stages of growth, to make the pictures). Little turtles are so cute! The book describes how turtles live in their different habitats, and the curious adaptations of some of the different species. Some, like the box turtle, can completely enclose themselves in a shell that has a hinge. On others, the shell is much smaller and the animal can\’t draw in its legs or head for protection. Some of the stranger-looking ones are the soft-shell turtle with a long tubular snout, and the matamata, a turtle with a thick neck, wide leering mouth and even longer nose! True, the book was lacking some facts that simply weren\’t known at the time- such as where sea turtles nested- but they did recognize that habitat destruction and egg-taking were threatening the populations of many species. The end of the book predicts that \”many turtle species will no longer exist on earth by the year 2000\”. I tried to look this up, but although quite a few species went extinct around the 1800\’s, I couldn\’t find a list of any recent extinctions. In fact, quite a few have made a surprising comeback. So hopefully the world is getting a little better for turtles.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 96 pages, 1973

How One Little Dolphin Learned to Swim Again
by Juliana, Isabella and Craig Hatkoff

I had this book in mind because I read about it at SMS Book Reviews and was really intrigued. I happened to find it while at the library, and it\’s a fairly short kid\’s non-fiction book, so I sat down and read it during our visit.

Winter\’s Tail is about a young dolphin who got caught in fishing gear off the coast of Florida. Her tail was so entangled that by the time help arrived, the blood flow was cut off. Rescuers saved her life, but she lost her tail. The little dolphin healed and began trying to swim again, but with a side-to-side motion which caused back problems and could have resulted in further injuries to her muscles and spine. So a special prosthetic tail was designed, just for her. She adapted quickly to her new tail, swimming like a dolphin again.

I loved this story. When I first told my husband about it (he\’s not enamored of animals like I am) he shook his head at the cost and research effort it must have taken to make that special prosthetic tail. Why don\’t they spend that kind of money and time helping people? he asked. Then I pointed out that the efforts to help Winter have affected people: in the first place, they had to create a special gel padding to protect the sensitive dolphin\’s skin from rubbing against the prosthetic. That same gel padding is now used for war veterans who have particularly painful amputation sites. Secondly, the little dolphin\’s story has been inspirational to children all over the world who struggle coping with amputations or other physical handicaps themselves. They flock to the aquarium to see her. One little girl mentioned in the book was resentful of having to wear a hearing aid until she saw this little dolphin swimming with its prosthetic. So now hubby agrees with me: this is a really cool story.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 40 pages, 2009

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Bibliophile by the Sea
Books for Kids Blog
5 Minutes for Books

How They Run, See and Think
by Stephen Budisansky

When I reserved this book at the library, I didn\’t realize it was a juvenile version of Budiansky\’s other book, The Nature of Horses. Still, I had it in hand while kiddo was involved in a library activity, so I started to read. It was pretty interesting, and well-written (not \”dumbed down\”). And it\’s been long enough since I read The Nature of Horses that the information in The World According to Horses felt fresh and new again. The book describes different aspects of horse behavior, biology and evolutionary history, answering the why\’s and how\’s. At the end of each chapter there\’s also a segment explaining methods the scientists used to answer their questions, which is just as interesting, and a final chapter brings up more questions that science hasn\’t answered yet, while encouraging young readers in the pursuit of scientific inquiry. Some of the things addressed in the book are how horses changed the course of human history when they were domesticated, how the natural social bonding between horses makes it easy for people to interact with them, the intelligence of horses, their communication methods, how their vision is different from ours, and why their physical conformation makes them good endurance runners. Any young reader interested in horses is sure to enjoy this book.

Rating: 3/5 ……… 101 pages, 2000

Anyone else read it? I\’ll add your link here.