About book Thunder Birds: Nature's Flying Predators (2011)
Ack! Gorgeous pictures, lovely text, plenty of information for data hounds. But the mix of all the different scales is just *wrong.* The fold-out osprey is not life-size, and we're not told just what proportion it is. Some illustrations are labeled 'half-size' - but most that aren't life size heads or feet aren't labeled. I mean, yes they are labeled in numbers, ie 25 inches or whatever, but not in anything that most of us can grasp. And the differently scaled illustrations are juxtaposed on the same page, so even though our brain wants to compare the different images one to another, we'd be misled if we did.If you want to use this lovely book, you're going to have to prepare cut-outs of all the different birds so that they're all to the same scale, preferably, of course, life-size. It'd make a great class project (or project for home-schooled children) to prepare the butcher-paper 'shadows' - and then, maybe, the fifth-grade students could share what they've learned and read the book to the kindergarten students.But for independent readers or casual family reading, I cannot recommend this. This book was amazing. Focusing on birds of prey, Arnosky painted life-sized parts of birds (all of them were too big to fit on a two- or even three-page spread) that are detailed and life-like. Some pages open out into three or four panels. For example, the osprey's wing covers two pages and part of a third. The picture that amazed me the most was the head of the great gray owl--I didn't know they were that big! I can see now how they might swoop down and kill small cats, which gives me the chills. I also liked the pictures of silhouettes of these birds in the air, so that you can tell what they are while flying overhead. Also featured were herons, pelicans, loons, cormorants, gannets, egrets, hawks, eagles, and vultures. At the back of the book Arnosky lists some of the places he and his wife went to view these birds. Two of them were right here in New York State--Montezuma National Wildlife Reserve and Iroquois National Wildlife Reserve. I've been to the former but not the latter--now I'll have to go back to them both! This has got to be a Sibert Medal winner. Recommended for bird enthusiasts everywhere!
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The pinacle of all that is good and wonderful about birds and this author! Amazing!!!
—david
Notes:gorgeous and fascinating picturesfold-outs for life size look
—ookie21
