ROBIN, WHERE ARE YOU?

Lucy goes birding with her grandfather, learning to use binoculars and identifying many birds before they finally find a robin.

In this unlikely bird-watching trip, the pair see common birds such as mourning doves and Canada geese and surprising birds such as a pileated woodpecker and Eastern screech owl, all before they find a robin’s nest and then the robin. The simple sentences of the text seem designed for early readers, who may also be intrigued by the flip-out additions to the pages. These reveal the birds and supply an interesting fact about each one. Wood's colorful illustrations are primitive in style but capture the birds’ silhouettes and color schemes. Experienced birders would have no trouble identifying the 15 birds introduced, although they might be astonished at the uniformity of the pigeons. Curiously, though mallards are prominently featured among the birds at the pond and also in the fold-out quiz at the end (no answers provided), they are left nameless. Inexcusably, towhee is misspelled as “t w o h e e” twice. Readers in western states should know that a number of these birds are not found west of the Rockies. Better options for encouraging young birders include Carol L. Malnor, Sandy F. Fuller and Louise Schroeder's The Blues Go Birding (2010), Joanne Ryder and Susan Estelle Kwas’ Wild Birds (2003), Jim Arnosky’s Crinkleroot’s 25 Birds Every Child Should Know (1993) or Cathryn and John Sill’s About Birds (1991).

Skip this one.