CONDOR MAGIC
by Lyn Littlefield Hoopes & illustrated by Peter Stone
Inflated poetry offers details about the California condor, a soaring bird who flew the skies 40,000 years ago, picking at the bones and carcasses of woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. Hoopes (The Unbeatable Bread, 1996, etc.) covers the condor's long history, as it flew through the ages to recent near-extinction, due to the taming of the West, DDT, and high- tension wires of modern civilization. Exalted language, peppered with exclamation points, sometimes gets in the way of the information presented: ``You're a curious dude/a ravenous raven,/disgustingly crude,/rudely behaving.'' Semi-impressionistic oil paintings emphasize mood over subject; the magic of the condor's life suggested by the title is lost in the poetic approach. (glossary) (Picture book. 6-10)