by Sy Montgomery
A kangaroo that lives in
trees? That's what I thought when I saw this book on display. I like the author as well, so of course I had to pick it up. Sy Montgomery was part of a team that accompanied researcher Lisa Dabek into the remote cloud forests of Papa New Guinea to study these arboreal marsupials. There are ten species of tree kangaroo, which
do hop but are excellent climbers with long curved claws and thick prehensile tails. They are pretty muich unknown to science. Lisa's team was the first to safely capture some tree kangaroos (the local people used to eat them), radio-collar them and study their movements. The book describes in detail how the team was organized and all the hard (and often dirty) work they did that led up to the wondrous moment of locating their first kangaroo. The gorgeous photographs and descriptive text wonderfully evoke a very distinct place on earth (Papa New Guinea has about 400 bird species, 60 mammals and 6,000 kinds of plants found nowhere else on Earth- and new ones are still being discovered!)
Not only is this book a good adventure story about a faraway, incredibly unique place, and the discovery of an amazing animal, but it's also a great introduction for kids about the work that field science actually entails.
Borrowed from the public library. Now I'm looking for Sy Montgomery's book about the pink river dolphins!
Rating: 4/5 ........ 79 pages, 2006
more opinions:
Jean Little Library
brooke dycus
Children's Literature Reviewed by Kathy Yale
We always loved Sy Montgomery's books. The pink dolphin may even be better than this one. Of course, we also loved the other Scientists in the Field books, too.
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