Parrots over Puerto Rico - a review

Roth, Susan L. and Cindy Trumbore. 2013. Parrots Over Puerto Rico. New York: Lee & Low.


I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to nonfiction books about the natural world, I prefer photography to artistic renderings.  Of course, there are always exceptions.  Jim Arnosky's, Thunderbirds (Sterling, 2011) and Martin Jenkins', Can We Save the Tiger? (Candlewick, 2011) come to mind.

Parrots Over Puerto Rico, however, is an extraordinary exception. Using highly detailed collage art, and employing many textured and brightly colored materials, Susan L. Roth has created a book that accurately portrays the colors of the island and evokes the stunning beauty of the endangered parrots of Puerto Rico. Designed to be read "portrait style," the collages cover about 2/3 of each double-spread layout.  Cindy Trumbore's narrative appears in a simple black font in the bottom third of the collage against a plain, complementary-colored background.

As stunning as it is, the artwork is not the only thing to love about Parrots over Puerto Rico. An astute teacher's dream, Parrots takes a holistic view of the parrots' rapid decline and slow slog back to viability in the wild.  As the story of the American Bison is forever entwined with the story of American Westward expansion, the Puerto Rican's parrot story is entwined with that of the Tainos, the Spaniards, and the Americans, as well as that of invasive species, and natural disasters like Hurricane Hugo.

Existing for millions of years on the island of Puerto Rico, they once numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and by 1975, had dwindled to only 13.

Above the treetops of Puerto Rico flies a flock or parrots as green as their island home.  If you look up from the forest, and you are very lucky, you might catch the bright blue flashes of their flight feathers and hear their harsh call.

These are Puerto Rican parrots.  They lived on this island for millions of years, and then they nearly vanished from the earth forever.  This is their story.

An Afterword contains photographs and information on the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program.  Also included is a timeline of Important Dates in the History of Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican Parrots, and Author's Sources.

Among others, Parrots Over Puerto Rico can boast of these awards:

• Starred Reviews in: Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, The Horn Book Magazine
• Original Art 2013, Society of Illustrators
• Books for Youth Editors' Choice 2013, Booklist 
• Junior Library Guild Selection

You can see a preview of Parrots Over Puerto Rico on Lee & Low's website, however, it doesn't do the book justice, as the preview is in landscape mode, while the actual bound book reads lengthwise.  Still, it's worth a gander.


 Check out this short video if you'd like to see an actual Puerto Rican parrot.




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The Great American Dust Bowl - a review

Brown, Don. 2013. The Great American Dust Bowl. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

In a slim (80-page), hardcover, graphic novel, Don Brown offers a compelling account of the causes, effects, and consequences of America's 19th century push into the Great Plains - first for ranching, then small farming enterprises, and finally, large-scale, motorized farming.  Years of drought combined with loss of prairie grassland that had sustained the American Indians and the wild buffalo herds, led to dust storms of epic proportions that lasted for a decade. Describing one storm, Brown writes,

On May 3, 1934, whirlwinds lifted 350 million tons of dirt from the Montana and the Dakotas' prairie, gathered them into gritty clouds that reached fifteen thousand feet, a height equal to twelve stacked Empire State Buildings. 

Enough dust to fill 1,500 modern supertankers blew East.

Dust fell like snow over Chicago.

Atlanta.

Boston.

Washington.

Midday Manhattan darkened beneath a dusty gray haze. Cars switched on their headlights to see. The Statue of Liberty seemed to disappear. Everywhere, dust: streets, sidewalks, grass, even the water in New York Harbor.

Panels of varying sizes, including double-spread pages, are presented primarily in sepia tones, denoting both the time period and the ever-present dirt.  Facts are presented in text boxes or within panels, in easy-reading Tim Sale Brush font, and dialogue (documented in the Source Notes and Selected Bibliography) appears in word bubbles.  Illustrations are pen and ink with "digital paint.  The hard-luck farmers are simply sketched, but convey seriousness and gravity.  Smiles can only be found on the "rainmaker," a snake oil salesman who profited from the sale of useless items that promised to bring rain, and on the faces of a small family who rejoices outside as rain finally arrives to break the drought.

When the rain came, it meant life itself. It meant a future.

The Great American Dust Bowl may be read quickly, but will not soon leave your mind. My library has cataloged this one as a young adult title, but it's certainly suitable for middle grades as well.  I highly recommend it.

• Title: Dust bowl farmer raising fence to keep it from being buried under drifting sand. Cimarron County, Oklahoma
• Creator(s): Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-1985, photographer
• Date Created/Published: 1936 Apr.
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions. For information, see U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs(http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html)
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

• Title: Liberal (vicinity), Kan. Soil blown by dust bowl winds piled up in large drifts on a farm
• Creator(s): Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-1985, photographer
• Date Created/Published: 1936 March.
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Other reviews @

• The New York Times (by NYPL's Betsy Bird)
• The Nonfiction Detectives

Other outstanding books featuring the Dust Bowl Era:

• Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse - 1998 winner of the Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction
• The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan - 2010 winner of the Scott O'Dell Award and also a graphic novel
• Years of Dust by Albert Marrin

Other Don Brown books reviewed by Shelf-employed:

• America is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell
• All Stations! Distress!: April 12, 1915: The Day the Titanic Sank (reviewed on LibraryThing)
• Let it Begin Here!: April 19, 1775: The Day the American Revolution Began (reviewed on LibraryThing)

Looking for more reviews of nonfiction books? 

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is at Wrapped in Foil.

Meadowlands: A Wetlands Survival Story

It's Nonfiction Monday and I'm pleased to be today's host location!

Yezerski, Thomas F., 2011. Meadowlands: A Wetlands Survival Story. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

From the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, you can see a flat, wet place in New Jersey.  Some people think it's just smelly swamps.  Others think of it as where the airport or malls or stadiums are.  Most people think it's not much of a place at all.  This place is called the Meadowlands.

Though the word meadow conjures thoughts of an idyllic landscape, to many New Jerseyans and nearby New Yorkers, the word Meadowlands does not.  Instead, thoughts of Giants Stadium, Super Fund sites, and, according to the governor, the state's ugliest building come to mind.  But as New Jersey resident Thomas F. Yezerski points out in Meadowlands: A Wetlands Survival Story, the Meadowlands is and always has been a changing place.

Yezerski begins the Meadowlands' story several hundred years ago when the Meadowlands was "20,000 acres of marshes, swamps, and bogs that were home to many different plants and animals," as well as the native people, the Lenni Lenape. Throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the area went through various changes - most of them for the worse.  Landfills, chemical dumping, noxious smells, overcrowding, filthy water - the picture looked grim, and the Garden State's new reputation as a smelly place along the Turnpike was fixed in the nation's consciousness.

But even after being dug out, filled in, run over, and dumped on, the wetlands still showed signs of life.  The Hackensack River still flowed south.  The tide still rose north from the Atlantic Ocean.  The river and tide still met in the Meadowlands twice a day, as they had for 10,000 years.  Because they did, the ecosystem had a chance to recover.

Meadowlands is a hopeful story. A story of the return of fish, birds, and even the marshland itself.  It's a story of possibility, of the positive effect that people can have when they are so determined.  Yezerski's love for the area is apparent. His pen and watercolor illustrations show that he has spent many hours and days in the Meadowlands, capturing its essence. Realistic detailing is present throughout, particularly in the birds, which approach guide book quality.  Each double spread features a rectangular painting set in a frame of white space.  Related icon-sized images surround the main illustration. Text appears plainly at the bottom of each page - no more than 4 lines per page.

The final pages show the fragile combination of a now bird-filled marshland located within one of the nation's most densely populated urban areas. The cover art, featuring a snowy egret in this urban wilderness is stunning.

Meadowlands should be required reading for all New Jersey schoolchildren, but it has value beyond New Jersey as well. It spreads the hopeful message:  If we can do it, so can you. Where there is water flowing, there is life.

Highly recommended.

Author's Note, Selected Bibliography, and Selected Web Sites are included.

You can learn more about the Meadowlands at the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission site or the many sites devoted to the Meadowlands' varied commercial ventures.

Link your Nonfiction Monday post below.  If you're not posting today or just stopped by to read, please check out the other great nonfiction posts linked below.  In either case, thanks for stopping by.

Scat

Hiaasen, Carl. 2009. Scat. Read by Edward Asner. New York: Listening Library.



Scat is the latest of Carl Hiaasen's single-syllabled, adventure mysteries - following the very successful Hoot and Flush. As in his previous books, Florida's wildlife and wild places take center stage in this environmental mystery featuring the endangered Florida panther. The mystery begins when the stern Mrs. Starch takes her Biology class on a field trip to the Black Vine Swamp. One student, nicknamed "Smoke," had a run-in with Mrs. Starch a day earlier and fails to show up for the trip. A fire in the swamp forces the students to return immediately to school, but Mrs. Starch, who had driven her own car, never arrives back at the Truman School.

Teenagers, Nick and Marta, begin to unravel the tangled mystery, beginning with a video Nick filmed in the swamp.

Kidnapping? Arson? Theft? Environmental crime?

What exactly is going on in the Black Vine Swamp?

More than just an environmental mystery, Scat touches on the concept of crime (can it ever be justified?) and the Iraq War (Nick's father is stationed in Iraq). The mystery unfolds asynchronously and from varying perspectives, adding intrigue but making it a more difficult book for reluctant readers.


My library has this book classified as young adult (YA) fiction, but it's certainly appropriate for 5th grade and up.

I listened to the audio version. After my initial surprise at hearing the gruff, old voice of Ed Asner, I easily settled in to the story and his depiction of the characters. His voice is particularly effective in creating the voices of grizzled old Floridians, oil men, and law enforcement officers.

Better than my own recommendation, my teen-aged daughter enjoyed Scat and my "reluctant-reader" son read it for hours yesterday!

Earth

Earth
2009 DisneyNature Rated G

I must confess that I'm not usually a fan of Disney movies, but it would be impossible to find fault with the Earth Day release of DisneyNature's Earth. Narrated by James Earl Jones, Earth is a visually stunning celebration of our planet's most unspoiled places and their inhabitants. From the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the windswept African desert to the lush and exotic tropical rain forest, Earth follows the awe-inspiring migrations and life-cycles of elephants, cranes, humpback whales, buffalo, polar bears and more.

Family-friendly, Earth illustrates the cycle of life primarily through the hunt and chase, rather than the capture of prey (with the exception of the Great White shark, which by its nature, cannot be depicted with restraint). Only the night-vision scenes of confrontations between elephants and lions might frighten the youngest viewers. I was pleased at the number of families attending the early evening showing. There were as many children as adult in the audience, perhaps more.

Three suggestions if you're planning to see Earth (and I hope you are!)

1. See it at a theater with digital projection - the grainy quality of film detracts from the cinematography.

2. Choose a late evening showing unless you are prepared (or heartened) by choruses of "Look, Mommy! A lion!" "Look, Mommy! It's a giraffe!"

3. Stay for the credits.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour - Switch off your lights for one hour on 3/28/2009 at 8:30pm local time.

Not children's lit, but a great message on the impact that a single person, even a child, can have on the environment.

10 Things I Can Do to Help My World

Walsh, Melanie. 2008. 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

I love this book! With its bright colors, double-spread illustrations, lift-the-flaps, and simple messages, it's a real winner!

Even the youngest of listeners can rally to the environmental cause with this eye-catching book. The simplest of messages can be read to the very young,

"I use... [lift the flap!] both sides of the paper."

in smaller print, (artfully positioned to become part the illustration) there is a slightly more complex message,

"If everybody did this, it would greatly reduce the number of trees we use to make paper."

This book is fun with a purpose! Check it out!