Look Up! Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard

The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Awards are given by the American Library Association to the most distinguished informational books for children.  A 2014 Honor Book (runner-up) was Look Up! Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard, written and illustrated by Annette LeBlanc Cate.   Her ink and watercolor illustrations are done in a cartoon style, with the birds making humorous wisecracks in speech bubbles.  The 51-page book is packed with information, though, on where to look for birds and what to look for on them.  Cate also provides advice on drawing birds, as well as a bibliography and an index for each bird type mentioned in the book.  The comic-book-like style and the book's complexity makes it more appropriate for third grade and up, and less appropriate as a read-aloud.


© Amanda Pape - 2014

[Look Up!  Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard is available on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library in the Curriculum Collection, call number EDUC QL677.5 .C38 2013.]