albatross

Wis­dom, the Mid­way Albatross
by Dar­cy Pat­ti­son (illus­trat­ed by Kit­ty Harvill)
Mim’s House, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2012
32 pages
Read­ing lev­el: 840L (grades 3–5)
How does a bird in the mid­dle of the Pacif­ic Ocean sur­vive the 2011 Japan­ese tsuna­mi and oth­er dan­gers for over 60 years? No one real­ly knows, but we do know for sure that Wisdom–the old­est known wild bird in the world–has.
This book intro­duces young read­ers to a sin­gle very spe­cial mem­ber of a large­ly unfa­mil­iar species, the Laysan Alba­tross. Through this riv­et­ing sur­vival sto­ry we not only grow to care about Wis­dom her­self, we also learn about the life cycle, habi­tat, and behav­ior of her kind. We see the many dan­gers they face, both nat­ur­al and man-made. We learn how sci­en­tists are care­ful­ly study­ing them. And we cheer for the par­tic­u­lar­ly resilient gooney bird who is even­tu­al­ly dubbed Wisdom.
Pat­ti­son does a great job of incor­po­rat­ing rhythm and rep­e­ti­tion to make this an excel­lent choice for young read­ers and read alouds, and Harvil­l’s art is both beau­ti­ful and detailed, adding to the sto­ry and bring­ing Wis­dom to life on every page. Chil­dren will be quick­ly swept up in the dra­ma and sus­pense of Wis­dom’s tri­als and will keep read­ing (or lis­ten­ing) to find out what hap­pens to her next. Then, they’ll sigh with relief at the hap­py end­ing when Wisdom–somehow–still survives.
The book also includes acknowl­edge­ments, a Facts About Wis­dom sec­tion, The Old­est Bird in the World time­line, a Typ­i­cal Year for a Laysan Alba­tross time­line, a fur­ther read­ing list, and sec­tions about both the author and illus­tra­tor. In addi­tion, there’s a blog with lots of videos, pic­tures, and addi­tion­al resources for stu­dents and teachers.
Yes, after read­ing this, I just had to become Face­book friends with Wis­dom her­self. Click here if you want to be, too!
Make sure to check out the oth­er stops on Wis­dom’s blog tour:

• Sue Heav­en­rich at Archimedes Note­book today,
• my author inter­view with Dar­cy Pat­ti­son here on 3/6/2012,
• Diane R. Chen Kel­ly at Prac­ti­cal­ly Par­adise on 3/9/2012, and
• Shirley Duke at Sim­ply Sci­ence on 3/14/2012.

To check out the rest of today’s roundup of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics books for kids, head on over to this week’s STEM Fri­day host, NC Teacher Stuff!
(Dis­claimer: I received a copy of this book from the pub­lish­er in exchange for my hon­est review. I received no mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion. All opin­ions expressed here are mine and mine alone.)