THE TALE OF PALE MALE

Winter’s luminous, hieratic style, with its velvety rich color and carefully shaped geometry, is eminently suited for the now-famous story of Pale Male, the Red-tailed Hawk who lives in New York City. She chronicles, in unadorned but lucid language, how Pale Male courted Lola, their building of a nest above the angel pediment of a Fifth Avenue building, and the response of the some of the residents to the rain of bones and feathers that accompanied the hawk family’s mealtimes. She captures perfectly the fascination of the city with these birds, their meshing of their hunting habitat with what the city offers and the accommodation of city life to wildlife. Each page holds an image of framed pattern and light: The rest of the page carries text below on a background color picked up from the painting. Her style is iconic rather than realistic (the urban clouds in rosy heart shapes as the hawks soar together are but one example of their charm) but young readers will get it right away, and upon repeated, joyous readings. (author’s note) (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)