Pete Salmansohn

I have been a puffin lover since the day I first set foot on Skellig Michael - one of two breathtakingly beautiful (and very rocky) islands off the west coast of Ireland's Iveragh Peninsula - and saw these little "clowns of the ocean," with their chubby black and white bodies, and colorful beaks, up close and personal. I know we're not supposed to anthropomorphize the birds and beasts, but they're just so darn cute! So when I discovered that Tilbury House, one of my current publisher obsessions, had released a book about the return of puffins to the Maine island of Eastern Egg Rock, I thought I'd better find a copy.

Project Puffin, which is told in the first person, chronicles Stephen Kress's efforts to reintroduce puffins to the Maine coast, where they once flourished, before being killed off by Euro-American settlers. Beginning in 1973, with the help of the Canadian Wildlife Service, Kress began transferring puffin chicks from the thriving Great Island colony, eventually establishing populations on Egg Rock, as well as nearby Seal Island. Using the same methods, Kress and his team also reestablished a tern colony. Profusely illustrated with color photographs, and including a brief glossary at the rear, this is an engaging and informative book, and will be of particular interest to young bird watchers and ecologists.… (plus d'informations)

Pete Salmansohn and Stephen W. Kress - the Audubon Society educator and Audubon Society Seabird Restoration Program director, respectively, who collaborated on the 1997 children's title, Project Puffin: How We Brought Puffins Back to Egg Rock - team up once again in this informative picture-book about six endangered avian species from around the world, and the scientists and activists working to protect and save them.

From the almost extinct black robins of New Zealand, whose numbers had plummeted to a staggering five (5!) left in the world, to the common murres of California, whose Devil's Slide Rock colony had been wiped out by a 1986 oil spill, the cases presented in Saving Birds: Heroes from Around the World highlight the potential for population recovery, even in cases of extreme threat. Some, such as the quetzals of Mexico, whose forest home has been threatened by local coffee-farming practices, or the black-necked cranes of China, whose winter wetland feeding grounds have (until recently) been taken over by impoverished farmers, show how human agricultural activity effects the surrounding wildlife. Others, such as the lesser kestrels of Israel, whose habitat continues to shrink, and whose fate is intimately tied to the warring peoples of that part of the world, or the rhinoceros hornbill of Malaysia, whose feathers are used in Sarawak cultural and religious ceremonies, demonstrate that even activities we might see as divorced from ecological concerns - human groups fighting one another, or practicing their traditional religions - are anything but.

In our recent discussion of ecologically-themed picture-books, in the Children's Books Group to which I belong, much was made of the fact that, in addition to educating young readers about the environmental threats facing our world, it is important to also provide hopeful and inspirational stories - to teach that something can be done, if we put our heads together. With more dire news abroad every day (the Gulf Coast oil spill, anyone?), this seems more important than ever, and Saving Birds: Heroes Around the World really fits the bill!… (plus d'informations)