A simply written animal tale with grade school–accessible vocabulary that’s sure to entertain children despite the mixed...
What does it take to raise chickens in the city? A woman and her cat find out in this true story by debut author and photographer Burrill.
“I’d heard that it’s cheap, easy and fun to raise egg-laying chickens in the city,” Burrill begins, her words accompanied by a clip-art chick and a photograph of her home’s garden shed. As she recounts the tale on text-dense pages, always with her own photographs or clip art present, she reveals it is indeed inexpensive to begin this project, but that the time and effort required to care for chickens and collect their eggs are far more than she bargained for. First, she purchased three small chicks, whom she kept indoors in a heated cage. It was there that her black cat, Tinker, fell in love. Rather than want to eat or torment the chicks, Tinker mothered them, draping herself on top of their cage to watch their antics. Burrill invited some local children to name the chicks (Daisy, Maizey, and Omelette). As the three grew, their chirping became louder, and Tinker fretted about her brood. Her worries only became worse after they moved outside to the backyard. After the chickens matured, Burrill was excited to see the first egg, but she was not prepared for Maizey escaping over her backyard fence to discover a good laying spot. Maizey led Burrill on a wild hunt, laying her eggs in odd places, and soon the other chickens followed suit. The chickens’ mischief overshadowed Tinker’s role in raising them, but eventually the cat helped Burrill locate an escaped hen. This child-friendly series opener offers an appealing tale. But some of the references and puns the author makes may fly over the heads of young readers (about the notion of buying grocery-store eggs, she explains, “I’d feel like a traitor, an ‘Eggs Benedict Arnold’ ”). And the human cast lacks diversity. Nevertheless, children should easily imagine Burrill having to rake out seven hidden eggs from beneath her shed and her attentive cat protectively watching over the adorable chicks. The clip art adds little to the text, but the author’s photographs are excellent, giving readers a clear sense of what it’s like to be a chicken-raising hobbyist.
A simply written animal tale with grade school–accessible vocabulary that’s sure to entertain children despite the mixed style and quality of the illustrations.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-4989-9
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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