Picture Book - Ruby's Birds by Mya Thompson

Illustrated by Claudia Davila

2019 Cornell Lab Publishing Group

HC $16.95

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  3.52 - 63 ratings

My rating:  3
Endpapers: white with puffy clouds

1^st line/s:  "School's out.  Mom and Dad are at word.  My brother, Malik, is at soccer practice.  Grandma's at her spot near the window.  Alex keeps her company.  Things are too quiet around here."

My comments: A young girl is introduced to bird-watching in Central park by her neighbor.   There are lots of birds to search for in the illustrations, which are really fun.  The story has a really flat ending, however.  A great writing extension for 4th & 5th graders might be to write a better ending!

Goodreads: Sometimes the most beautiful things in nature can go unnoticed. Meet Ruby, a seven-year-old kid with the energy of the city in which she lives--New York City. She plays the piano--LOUDLY. She romps around the apartment--LOUDLY. And she sings songs she makes up herself--LOUDLY!
          So, when her downstairs neighbor Eva takes her on a nature walk through Central Park, Ruby has to learn how to slow down, step carefully, and be quiet enough to see and hear the amazing birds that are everywhere around her.
          From author Mya Thompson and illustrator Claudia D�vila comes a delightful story of a brand-new bird watcher just spreading her wings.

MOVIE - A Birder's Guide to Everything

PG-13 (1:27)

Limited release 3/21/14

Viewed 4/2/14 at the Loft

RT Critic: 95 Audience: 69

Cag: 3.5 A sweet and funny coming-of-age with a touch of teariness

Directed by Robber Meyer

Screen Media Venture/Focus

Ben Kingsley, James LeGros

My comments:  First reaction:  It was so short! (Lost of long movies lately, I guess.)  Totally enjoyable movie about three 15-year old geeky friends who are bird-watchers, focusing on one who lost his mom a year previously and his discomfort with his dad's remarriage (SPOILER:  to his mom's nurse).  Very cute movie.

Reviews:  David Portnoy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a 15-year-old birding fanatic, thinks that he's made the discovery of a lifetime. So, on the eve of his father's remarriage, he escapes on an epic road trip with his best friends to solidify their place in birding history. 

Attracting Birds to Your Backyard - Sally Roth

536 Ways to Create a Haven for Your Favorite Birds
Rodale Press, 1998
paper $16.95
TPPL 598.07234

Well, for some reason after many grownup years of total disinterest in birds, I'm getting a boot out of watching the finches outside my study window. I went to Wild Birds and bought a niger feeder with a contraption to stick it onto my window. It sat for almost two months before I had any visitors, but now they've found it and are nibbling happily away. They're pretty cool to watch up close.

So I returned two weeks ago and bought a feeder and contraption that screws to the top of my wrought-iron fence out back. And to my great delight, last Saturday morning, amid finches and other birds, along came a CARDINAL! This was a pretty big deal to me. I do not recollect ever seeing a cardinal before. I may have, I just don't recollect it.

I'll miss the northeastern robins, though, that always meant that spring was finally, FINALLY coming to the coast of Maine!

I just finished reading/skimming this helpful, interesting book. It's full of information about different birds, different seeds and feeds, who likes to eat what, plants that are helpful and nutritious...all sorts of really nifty information. Groan, groan, I'm going to start a journal/notebook. I'm too old to hold all of this in my head. But at least I've gone from only being able to identify a chickadee, robin, pigeon, crow, seagull, quail, and owl to a fine purveyor of Tucson winter finches - of the house finch and goldfinch variety.. Cool colors, reds, and lime greens and yellows. Pretty fun!

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound - Sallie Wolf

Charlesbridge, 2010
$11.95
For: Kids
44 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Gray & cream checkerboard with simple bird sketches

Observation journal - an excellent model
Poetry book
Sketching
Watercolors

This journal takes us through a year of observations - of birds, or the changing seasons, and models an observation journal beautifully. It is also a poetry book that includes rhyming poeims, haiku, list poems....

Wolf ends her jounral with a page of thoughts behind journal keeping and a page of bird-watching resources.

Winter Wren
Are you a winter wren?
I see you only once or twice a year ---
a tiny, dark shadow scooting under bushes.
If your tail weren't so perky,
if you weren't so tiny,
I'd think you were on of those
ubiquitous sparrows.

Frustrations
I often hear what I can't see ---
birds and squirrels scolding me.
I scan the branches far and near,
but I don't see what I can hear.

(A haiku)
Early crocuses
burst through dead leaves. Brown creepers
circle up tree trunks.

I love all the pen and ink and watercolor sketches.

Next year I'm going to begin our science studies with observations of the flora and fauna of southern Arizona. Perhspas I'll teach the kids how to sew together an easy journal of blank pages and we can start making observations using this super book as a model.