Wholly absorbing—a sure-fire way to turn even a casual birder into a woodpecker fanatic.
Bannick details 41 different species of woodpeckers across 11 genera in this nonfiction work.
The author became enthralled with woodpeckers at the tender age of 8 or 9 after spying one through his kitchen window; it’s a good bet that readers will grow equally enamored with the intriguing little creatures as well. That’s due to both Bannick’s encyclopedic knowledge of the birds and the often-lyrical prose he uses to describe them. “As the first golden rays of light splintered through bundles of needles on giant red-armored ponderosa pines in Washington’s Cascade Range, I began to hear a cacophonous mixture of shrieks, mewing, churrs, rattles, warbles, cackles, and chipping blended with loud, rhythmic drumming of various cadences and amplitudes,” he writes. The effect of such language is infectious and enough to send one off on a scouting expedition to see what might be uncovered in one’s own backyard. Woodpeckers can be found performing their indispensable handiwork from the Caribbean all the way to the Arctic; the author sets his sights on those living in North America over the course of a year. He calls them “tree doctor[s],” explaining that the birds are beneficial to humans as they control pests and shield trees from destructive budworms and the like. Woodpeckers also create and improve habitats by making sap available to migrating animals, dispersing seeds, and cultivating the soil with the wood chips they produce by hammering their impressive bills into hard tree bark. How do they do this and avoid causing severe harm to themselves? Bannick has the detailed answer to that question, as well as a treasure-trove of many others. The text is fascinating and a delight to read, supplemented by a generous amount of stunning close-up full-color photography by the author. Sadly, some of these marvelous birds are in trouble due to a variety of factors ranging from excessive timber harvesting to climate change—the author hopes that a greater appreciation for woodpeckers and an increased awareness about the perils they face will spur humans to come to their aid.
Wholly absorbing—a sure-fire way to turn even a casual birder into a woodpecker fanatic.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781680513165
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. . . . In the meantime, in between time, we can see. . . we can work at making sense of (what) we see. . . to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. It's common sense; when you-move in, you try to learn the neighborhood." Dillard's "neighborhood" is hilly Virginia country where she lived alone, but essentially it is all those "shreds of creation" with which every human is surrounded, which she is trying to learn, to know — from finite variations to infinite possibilities of being and meaning. A tall order and Dillard doesn't quite fill it. She is too impatient to get about the soul's adventures to stay long with an egg-laying grasshopper, or other bits of flora and fauna, and her snatches from physics and biological/metaphysical studies are this side of frivolous. However, Ms. Dillard has a great deal going for her — in spite of some repetition of words and concepts, her prose is bright, fresh and occasionally emulates (not imitates) the Walden Master in a contemporary context: "Trees. . . extend impressively in both directions, . . . shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach." She has set herself no less a task than understanding emotionally, spiritually and intellectually the force of the creative extravagance of the universe in all its beauty and horhor ("There is a terrible innocence in the benumbed world of the lower animals, reducing life to a universal chomp.") Experience can be focused, and awareness sharpened, by a kind of meditative high. Thus this becomes somewhat exhausting reading, if taken in toto, but even if Dillard's reach exceeds her grasp, her sights are leagues higher than that of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, regretfully (re her sex), the inevitable comparison.
Pub Date: March 13, 1974
ISBN: 0061233323
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harper's Magazine Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1974
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