Look! Up in the sky!

Look Up! A kids book about bird watching by Annette Leblanc Cate.

Once a week my daughter’s class gets to check a book out of the library at school. You never know what’s gong to come home… for awhile it was books from the Magic Treehouse series, a couple of weeks ago a thesaurus, and twice she’s brought home these semi horrible modern takes on Greek mythology called Goddess Girls (think Sydney Sheldon novels for the young readers world.)

But anything that keeps the kids interested in reading is worth having around for a week, right?

And then sometimes a book crosses the threshold that we don’t ever want to give up. Look Up! is one of those books. In fact, I like it so much that I am going to order our ow copy just as soon as I finish this post.

Meticulously written and illustrated with humor and love by Annette LeBlanc Cate, the book is the perfect introduction to the world of bird watching for kids. There is tons of information, without seeming at all overwhelming, and the cheeky narrator opens doors to this singular universe that even the most novice of naturalists will want to step through. Plus the cartoon birds, lovingly drawn in a totally approachable style, have all sorts of amusing things to say about their world.

In this chart, the birds tell us all about their various colors, while also throwing in some funny facts about temperament (the Merlin just says “Grrrrr” while looking at the smaller birds he can’t eat because he’s in a chart)

This page begins to describe all of the different styles of feet, tails and plumage one might find when looking at our avian neighbors.

Our walks to school now take twice as long, because we are both busy stopping and trying to figure out just what kind of sparrow we’re looking at, or whether or not that was a crow flying overhead.

But it’s time well spent. So much more fun to look at birds than text messages, if you know what I’m saying…