Dogs: From Predator to Protector


Andy Hirsch - 2017
    These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!

Beauty and the Beak: How Science, Technology, and a 3d-Printed Beak Rescued a Bald Eagle


Deborah Lee Rose - 2017
    Follow Beauty's brave and inspiring story as she grows up in the wild, is rescued after being illegally shot, and receives a new beak specially engineered by a human team including a raptor biologist, engineer and dentist. Learn more about how bald eagles as a species came back from near extinction, and about nationwide efforts to conserve this American symbol.

Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds


Joy Adamson - 1960
    Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the wild and its inhabitants is increasingly threatened by human development and natural disaster, Adamson's remarkable tale is an idyll, and a model, to return to again and again.Illustrated with the same beautiful, evocative photographs that first enchanted the world forty years ago and updated with a new introduction by George Page, former host and executive editor of the PBS series Nature and author of Inside the Animal Mind, this anniversary edition introduces to a new generation one of the most heartwarming associations between man and animal.

Sleepover with Beatrice and Bear


Monica Carnesi - 2014
      How can two friends share winter when one of them is hibernating? Beatrice and Bear meet one spring day and become best buddies. They play together through summer and fall. Then winter comes and Beatrice can’t find Bear anywhere. She hears he’s gone to hibernate—but where on earth is that? When Beatrice learns that hibernation is not a place and that Bear will be sleeping all winter long, she fears it will be a lonely season . . . unless she comes up with a brilliant plan to share winter with Bear too.

The Magic School Bus: Butterfly and the Bog Beast: A Book about Butterfly Camouflage


Nancy E. Krulik - 1996
    Firzzle whisks the class off to a bog full of butterflies to learn what those flying creatures are really like.

Under the Snow


Melissa Stewart - 2009
    But at the end of the day, we go home where it is warm and safe. What about all those animals out there in the forests and fields? What do they do when snow blankets the ground? Journey from your neighborhood to the woods, where ladybugs crowd together in a gap in the stone wall and a chipmunk snoozes in his burrow. Take a side trip to the pond, where a carp rests quietly on the bottom and a green frog nestles in the mud, scarcely breathing. And then as winter passes and the sun's rays grow stronger, join all the animals as they get ready for spring. Award-winning science writer Melissa Stewart offers a lyrical tour of a variety of habitats, providing young readers with vivid glimpses of animals as they live out the winter beneath the snow and ice. Constance R. Bergum's glowing watercolors perfectly capture the wonder and magic that can happen under the snow.

Tadpole's Promise


Jeanne Willis - 2005
    Where the willow tree meets the water, a tadpole met a caterpillar.They gazed into each other's tiny eyes...and fell in love."I love everything about you," said the caterpillar."Promise you'll never change." And foolishly the tadpole promised...But we all know that tadpoles don't stay the same, and neither do caterpillars.Will they still be able to love each other?

Where Is the Great Barrier Reef?


Nico Medina - 2016
    The Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Australia, is the world's largest coral reef system. Stretching more than 1,400 miles, it provides a home to a wide diversity of creatures. Designated a World Heritage Site, the reef is suffering from the effects of climate change but this fascinating book shows this spectacular part of our planet.

Bees: A Honeyed History


Piotr Socha - 2015
    From Athena to Alexander the Great and from Egypt to Ethiopia, Bees explores different methods of beekeeping and uncovers the debt that humans owe this vital species. With beautifully accessible illustrations depicting everything from bee anatomy to the essentials of honey making, readers will be captivated by the endless wonders of this seemingly small speck of the animal kingdom.

Rascal


Sterling North - 1963
    Rascal is only a baby when Sterling brings him home, but soon the two are best friends, doing everything together--until the spring day when everything suddenly changes.Rascal is a heartwarming boyhood memoir that continues to find its way into the hearts of readers fifty years later. This special anniversary edition includes the book's classic illustrations restored to their original splendor, as well as a letter from the author's daughter, and material from the illustrator's personal collection."Everyone should knock off work, sit beneath the nearest tree, and enjoy Rascal from cover to cover."—Chicago Tribune

The Goshawk


T.H. White - 1951
    White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence — "the bird reverted to a feral state" — seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word 'feral' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, 'ferocious' and 'free.'" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.

The Lost Spells


Robert Macfarlane - 2020
    Now, The Lost Spells, a book kindred in spirit and tone, continues to re-wild the lives of children and adults.The Lost Spells evokes the wonder of everyday nature, conjuring up red foxes, birch trees, jackdaws, and more in poems and illustrations that flow between the pages and into readers’ minds. Robert Macfarlane’s spell-poems and Jackie Morris’s watercolour illustrations are musical and magical: these are summoning spells, words of recollection, charms of protection. To read The Lost Spells is to see anew the natural world within our grasp and to be reminded of what happens when we allow it to slip away.

The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs


David Hone - 2016
    But despite the hype, Tyrannosaurus and the other tyrannosaurs are fascinating animals in their own right, and are among the best-studied of all dinosaurs.Tyrannosaurs started small, but over the course of 100 million years evolved into the giant carnivorous bone-crushers that continue to inspire awe in palaeontologists, screenplay writers, sci-fi novelists and the general public alike. Tyrannosaurus itself was truly impressive; it topped six tons, was more than 12m (40 feet) long, and had the largest head and most powerful bite of any land animal in history.The Tyrannosaur Chronicles tracks the rise of these dinosaurs, and presents the latest research into their biology, showing off more than just their impressive statistics - tyrannosaurs had feathers and fought and even ate each other. This book presents the science behind this research; it tells the story of the group through their anatomy, ecology and behaviour, exploring how they came to be the dominant terrestrial predators of the Mesozoic and, in more recent times, one of the great icons of biology.

The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts


Shinta Cho - 1978
    "Both informative and blunt, the book provides young readers with solid facts as well as plenty to snicker about, including sage advice ('Don't hold them in--pass that gas!)."--"Publishers Weekly." Full color.

Thoreau at Walden


John Porcellino - 2008
    In this graphic masterpiece, John Porcellino uses only the words of Thoreau himself to tell the story of those two years off the beaten track. The pared-down text focuses on Thoreau's most profound ideas, and Porcellino's fresh, simple pictures bring the philosopher's sojourn at Walden to cinematic life. For readers who know Walden intimately, this graphic treatment will provide a vivid new interpretation of Thoreau's story. For those who have never read (or never completed!) the original, it presents a contemporary look at a few brave words to live by.