Non-Fiction - New and Old

Thanks to Alyson Beecher's Non-Fiction Picture Book Challenge at Kidlit Frenzy!

         Come read to discover everyone's recent nonfiction picture books.

       Tweet - #NFPB16

Reading and enjoying the new and the old.

              With amazing photographs, Sandra Markle tells the decades-old and satisfactory story of saving these beautiful Tamarins. Scientists all over the world, in the wild and in zoos, worked to solve the problems of decreasing numbers and loss of habitat. They found ways to ensure that tamarins would finally thrive and reproduce in zoos, and then created new ways for them to move from territory to territory by forming living 'tree bridges' so the tamarins could (and would) move safely from forest to forest. The forest were isolated because of clear-cutting to grow crops. There is much additional information, a glossary, a timeline, and an index as well as an author note and websites where one can find out more. It's a great story of success, and one that one might wish could also be written about other animals facing extinction on our earth. 

    I didn't know about this book until someone shared it, but I'm so happy they did. Many know Lita Judge's wonderful power of illustration, but to share interesting information newly discovered in recent years about different kinds of dinosaur babies must be challenging. And it is both beautiful and instructive. I've known some things about dinosaurs, but not this new information, about varied dinosaurs, small and huge, feathered and not. Paleontologists have found evidence of behavior similar to wolves, elk, large raptors, and sea birds. The amount of information in the book is clearly explained in both words and pictures. There are additional pieces about each dinosaur mentioned in the text at the back. What I loved about this is that in these small sketches, a man is drawn, showing the differences in sizes. Judge has also added a glossary and a bibliography.  

          Both books are excellent text examples of non-fiction reporting, using either photos or sketches. They tell the stories in different ways, but inform and entertain beautifully.