LOOKING FOR SEABIRDS

Readers take an Alaskan cruise in this follow-up to Sibert Honor winner My Season with Penguins (2000). In this go-round, ornithologist Webb finds herself on a research vessel counting seabirds as part of an exploration of the marine life around the Aleutian Island chain. It shares many of its strengths with its predecessor: meticulous watercolor illustrations, a journal format, and an engagingly direct way of communicating both the science—“Imagine if a bird population dropped drastically in a certain area; it could indicate that there is a severe decline in the productivity, or food supply, in the ocean for some reason”—and how that science is discovered—“Jaime . . . records, I count the Least Auklets, and George . . . counts anything different. I get so excited that my binoculars steam up.” If the nature of this expedition—counting many seabirds instead of concentrating on one species of penguin—necessarily causes the focus of this offering to be less sharp than the previous one, it still provides both author and reader a valuable opportunity to spend time in the process of research. (Nonfiction. 10-14)