Arbor Day is coming up April 28, 2023. Looking for ways to participate? Consider reading the new picture book, Rise to the Sky: How the World’s Tallest Trees Grow Up by Rebecca E. Hirsch and illustrated by Mia Posada as part of your celebration. The book starts with a simple question:  What are the tallest living things? Do you know? If you guessed trees, then you are right. Next are a series of illustrations that show visually how tall some of the biggest trees are. Unlike Mia Posada’s eye-catching illustrations in Plant’s Can’t Sit Still, this time she uses cut paper collage to co ..read more

On a recent hike, my son joked that we could identify one type of tree by recognizing the butterflies hanging around it. The butterflies were the Empress Leilias, and American snout butterflies. Can you guess the tree? In this case it was the desert hackberry, Celtis pallida. Unlike its relative the netleaf hackberry (previous post), the desert hackberry keeps its leaves all winter long.  When ripe, the bright orange fruit are a favorite of many species of birds. A tree that supports both birds and butterflies, doesn’t require much water, and is green all year? Sounds like a wonder ..read more

Right in time for World Rivers Day (September 25, 2022), let’s jump in with wonderful example of picture book nonfiction,  A River’s Gifts: The Mighty Elwha River Reborn by Patricia Newman and illustrated by Natasha Donovan. Running through the book is the story of the Elwha River, which courses from Olympic National Park to the ocean in Washington state.  Centuries ago several varieties of salmon and trout swam up the river to have their young.  Then in the early 1900s people dammed the river, blocking the salmon from swimming upstream and flooding the landscape. The salmon num ..read more

Every year a small patch of wild sunflowers pops up in my front yard.  And every year I’m amazed at how many living things use them for food and shelter. Take last week: One flower had this teeny, tiny praying mantis nymph. This flower was so popular, it had a skipper butterfly and a digger bee. Can you see the bee? Every morning a small flock of lesser goldfinches hang from the sunflower seed heads, pulling out the seeds. I have never gotten a good photo or video, but this is what they look like:   The birds drop and scatter enough seeds so that next year there’s sure to be anoth ..read more

After decades of declining numbers, ospreys are on the rise again. Discover more about how people are helping ospreys recover with the new picture book,  Swoop and Soar: How Science Rescued Two Osprey Orphans and Found Them A New Family In The Wild by Deborah Lee Rose and Jane Veltkamp. In the first part of the book, we hold our breaths following the perilous journey of two newly-hatched osprey chicks. One night a storm destroys  Swoop and Soar’s nest and the chicks fall to the ground. Nearby, another osprey family has lost their offspring, but still come back to their nest. With a ..read more

Why did the caterpillar cross the road? Last week we went for a drive and in one area the white-lined sphinx caterpillars were crawling across the road. They weren’t in large numbers, but noticeable. Why were they doing that? Adult white-lined sphinx The caterpillars could have run out of food plants and were looking for another snack, but the more likely explanation was that they were in the “wandering phase.” When caterpillars have finished eating and growing, they may wander around looking for an ideal place to dig into the soil and pupate. Sometimes they wander onto roads, but they real ..read more

  I just can’t contain my excitement about this awesome book:  Funky Fungi: 30 Activities for Exploring Molds, Mushrooms, Lichens, and More by Alisha Gabriel and Sue Heavenrich . Why am I excited? First of all, Funky Fungi is by one of my favorite publishers, Chicago Review Press.  They are leading experts at hands-on STEM books for kids. Secondly, fungi are fascinating organisms, but are too often ignored. For a long time they got shoved into a drawer with plants and forgotten. It is great to see publishers and educators finally taking an interest in all the cool stuff they ha ..read more

Visit the Pollinator Week website and/or follow @Pollinators on Twitter for activities and events. Check their learning center education page for a massive list of curricula, educational tools, etc. They also have a webinar series for older students. Our favorites include: The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign has a free 126 page pollinator curriculum (download) for Grades 3-6. Our previous post has several activity suggestions for Pollinator Week, including keeping a pollinator diary. Multi-day online lessons and activities celebrating pollinators at Tohono Chul. See our growing ..read more

  Time to check out the new picture book,  Book of Dinosaurs: 10 Record-Breaking Prehistoric Animals by Gabrielle Balkan and illustrated by Sam Brewster. (We’ve previously reviewed two other books by Gabrielle Balkan and Sam Brewster, Book of Bones and Book of Flight. If you enjoyed those, this book has many of the same features.) In Book of Dinosaurs, explore which record-breaking dinosaurs had: • The toughest armor • The sharpest eyesight • The biggest belly • The spikiest tail and more. Readers are asked to guess which dinosaur wins the category based on an amazing illustration of ..read more

We haven’t had a photograph for Bug of the Week in a long time, so let’s add one to celebrate National Nature Photography Day. In the past we’ve seen these damselflies in August and September, so June 15, 2022 seems early. Maybe we just missed them before. The damselfly is hunting for insects on our sunflower plants.   ..read more