Susan Vande Griek

Probably best suited for kids aged 7-10, this is a lively nonfiction picture book which mostly focuses on the distinctive movements of twelve different kinds of birds as they migrate, feed, court, or try to protect themselves. The author includes a poem and a paragraph about the special moves each feathered creature is known for. (At the back of the book, readers can also find a glossary, additional information about the birds, and drawings of their feathers.) Artist Mark Hoffman’s illustrations, if not anatomically exact, effectively suggest the quality of the birds’ movements.

I certainly appreciated the facts Vande Griek presented, but I wasn’t overly impressed by her poems. Their language is often bland, repetitive, and clumsy. While poetry sometimes affords a writer greater flexibility than prose, I don’t see it as an excuse to break rules of proper usage. There are a fair number of misplaced and dangling modifiers in the poems, and Vande Griek likes to make her own verbs out of words that are actually nouns. Some might find this playful; I don’t see it as a good thing in a children’s nonfiction book melding science and literature. For example, Vande Griek tells us that “Geese skein” and “Hawks kettle”. In fact, a skein is “a flock of wild geese or swans in flight”, while a kettle is “a large group of raptors circling high in the sky on an updraft of warm air.” The words are nouns. They don’t represent actions but formations. There are many more examples of this kind of careless writing. The author is not as sensitive to the nuances of language as a poet needs to be. Precision counts.

Criticisms aside, I’d still recommend the book for the interesting and sometimes unusual facts it provides. One of the more compelling sections for me was Vande Griek’s discussion of the aerial courtship cartwheels of bald eagles, which may be the eagle’s way of testing the fitness of a potential mate or a bonding ritual. I’ve provided a link to some red kites performing a similar display:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PJedjMC1UO8… (more)