Celebrate World Wildlife Day with Animal Books!

It’s World Wildlife Day – so the theme for today is animals. In particular, penguins – and also maps, because mapping things can give us insight into animal lives.

Themes: animals, nonfiction, maps

Emperor of the Ice: How a Changing Climate Affects a Penguin Colony 

by Nicola Davies; illus by Catherine Rayner 

32 pages; ages 5-9

Candlewick, 2023 

It’s April in Antarctica.

That’s not a “beginning of spring” April, but a “winter is coming” April. Most animals are heading north to warmer weather, but not the emperor penguins. Sea ice and bitter cold – that’s what they’ve been waiting for. This is breeding season, and they’ll depend on that sea ice to last as long as it takes to raise a chick. That sea ice is how mama penguin gets to the fisheries and, when she returns to care for the just hatched chick, it’s how papa penguin will get to the fishes.

What I like about this book: The combination of text and illustrations gives a wonderful glimpse into the life of emperor penguins. And it emphasizes why the ice is so important; without it, the penguins could perish. Back matter explains what climate change is and discusses how a warming world affects Antarctic sea ice. There’s also a section about what people can do to slow climate change.

Maps for Penguins and Other Traveling Animals

by Tracey Turner, illus. by Hui Skipp 

48 pages; ages 6 & up

Kane/Miller Book Publishers, 2023

Animals find their way without using maps, GPS, a compass, street signs, or any of the things we humans need if we don’t want to get lost.

Some of them travel thousands of miles, from one continent to another, over vast stretches of ocean. Others travel short distances, over to the next meadow to pick up a basket of pollen for the hive. And some mark their territories, warning others to keep out!

What I like about this book: I love maps, so I picked this book for the title. And I was not disappointed – there are ten maps detailing travels of penguins, butterflies, tigers, whales, honeybees, lemurs … and even sea turtles! These aren’t maps for those various creatures to use – but visual representations that help us understand more about their lives and the journeys they undergo on a daily or seasonal basis. Take the map for penguins: it shows a route to the rookery and route back to colony. Plus it’s annotated with short notes about what is going on at each stop. Another spread tells more about penguins lives. Or check out the ring-tailed lemur’s map: which details the territory of one group of lemurs living on the island of Madagascar. Landmarks include a sunbathing rock, the sleeping tree, and a place where territorial fights sometimes happen.

Beyond the Books:

Fold a penguin out of paper. All you need is a sheet of paper. Here’s a video showing how to do it. And here's directions for a slightly easier version.

Hold a Penguin Dance Party. Waddle like a penguin, create slippy-slidy moves, and have fun. Grab some ideas from this post.

What can you do to make the world a better place for penguins and other animals? List at least three things you can do starting today. You can get some ideas here.

Map your travels. Maybe you want to show your daily travels to/from school, or a seasonal journey over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house. Make sure to put in some landmarks and some notes about what happens where.

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

The Lost Forest

The Lost Forest 
by Phyllis Root; illus. by Betsy Bowen
40 pages; ages 4 - 9
Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2019

theme: maps, forests, wildlife

How do you lose a forest?

Especially when trees are so tall you can’t see their tops. So big it takes two or more people holding hands to reach around. You’d think a forest of trees like that would be easy to find – but in 1882, in Minnesota, a survey crew lost an entire forest. It disappeared right off their maps! Great news for the trees – they kept right on growing. Great news for the other plants and the animals living in the forest – they kept on raising seeds and babies and continuing their community of life.

For more than 75 years the mistake stayed on the map, protecting the trees from the lumberjacks’ saws and axes. Now the forest is protected and you can go visit 350-year old pines. So it is a lost-and-found forest, right?

What I like love about this book: I love the way Phyllis Root tells her story, with a sly wink to the reader. “If you were trying to turn this rollicking land into straight lines on paper, you might make a mistake,” she writes.  She reminds readers that the trees had never been lost. Neither had the orchids, porcupines, and other wild plants and animals. They knew exactly where they were!

I love the illustrations by Betsy Bowen. They pull you right into the woods. I like the endpages – maps of the township – and the plentitude of back matter. There you’ll find out more about old growth forests and some of the species you might find there. You can find out more about surveying, and there’s a fun section called “how to talk like a surveyor”.

Beyond the Books:

Map your backyard. Here’s a great blog post to inspire you. And another link.

Use legos to build a map of a place you know, or a place in a story. Get some ideas here.

Today we're joining other book bloggers over at STEM Friday, where you can discover other cool STEM books. And we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website . Review copy provided by the publisher.

Bees Don't Need Maps!

I love maps. I may even be a "maphead" - and in fact am reading a book by that very title by Ken Jennings (Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks). Bees, apparently, don't need maps - though they do use landmarks. Instead, they do some back-of-the-antennae figuring that optimizes their routes. You can read about it here.