Posted on by TracyC

Starlings

Starlings by Wilfred S. Bronson, 1948.

The title of the book tells you what it’s about; this is a children’s picture book about starlings. That sounds pretty straight-forward and even a little dull, but there is more to learn about starlings than I imagined, and the author of this book has an imaginative way of explaining information. I love books that cover odd topics in detail, and I enjoyed the whimsical quality of this book. The pictures are detailed black-and-white drawings, some with captions like comics. Most of them explain the anatomy of the birds or their habits, but they have some unique ways of expressing educational information.

The book begins by describing the singing of starlings and then explains how farmers view starlings. Starlings can be a pest to farmers when they eat their fruit or the seeds the farmers are trying to plant, but they can also be helpful when they eat weed seeds and prevent weeds from coming up in the farmers’ fields. Of course, the birds don’t know when they’re helping or hindering because, as far as they’re concerned, they’re just there to eat any food that happens to be available at the moment. I like the little picture of the bird reading a mystery book, trying to figure out why farmers don’t mind when they eat some seeds and try to scare them away from others. That’s an example of the whimsy I was talking about.

The book continues describing what starlings eat and places where they like to roost, and it explains how they affect people living in cities (mainly, messing up their cars). There were times when people in cities considered them such a nuisance that they would shoot them, and some poor people hunted them for food. Actually, the entire reason why we have starlings in the US is that people over-hunted other types of birds (there is a disturbing picture of hunters with piles of dead birds at one point in the book), and birds are an important part of the ecosystem. Even though they can annoy farmers when they eat seeds and fruit, they also eat bugs that are pests to crops.

I was really struck by the passage that explained how starlings were first brought to the United States and why they were brought here:

“Some people think that starlings have no right to food or nesting-places because they are not ‘American birds.’ Yet all the starlings you see were born in America. So were their parents and grandparents and great-great-grandparents and all their relatives clear back to 1890. In that year their ancestors were caught in Europe and brought in cages to America. So many American birds had been killed at that time by our own ancestors that our crops were growing wormier and wormier each year, while insect pests grew worse and worse. So starlings were imported to help us fight the insects. They were freed in Central Park in New York City and left to look out for themselves.”

This explanation uses simplified language for children, and it also oddly evokes imagery of human beings. We don’t normally refer to animals as “foreigners” because animals don’t speak different human languages or have allegiances to foreign governments like people from other countries do. When we talk about new species that have been introduced to an environment where they did not originally belong and quickly spread out and multiple, we usually call them “invasive species.” In that case, the ecological concern is that the new invasive species will disrupt the balance of the natural environment and crowd out native species, but the author is trying to point out that the situation with the starlings was different. The starlings were introduced to the environment in the US on purpose, not by accident, and it was done specifically because they were meant to a solution to a problem. The environment had already been disrupted by humans who had moved into areas where they had not lived previously and where they killed too many of the native species themselves without regard to what that would do to the natural environment and their own farming. The introduction of the starlings was meant to restore a balance that had been lost. However, the people who had originally caused the problem didn’t see it that way, seeing the starlings as pests because they were “foreign.” While birds in general may occasionally be a nuisance because they don’t understand human priorities, they still perform useful functions for human beings as they go about their lives, just being the birds they are – eating annoying weed seeds and bugs and scavenging food from what humans throw out.

“People who think that starlings should be starvelings because they are ‘foreigners’ should remember that these American-born birds save much of what they themselves throw away and are still helping us to fight insects as they did in 1890.”

I understand what the author is trying to explain about balance in the ecological system, but I was struck by the human imagery that the passage evokes: “Foreigners” who came to New York City, not unlike immigrants fresh off the boat from Ellis Island during the 19th century, set free to make their way in a strange environment among people who often regarded them as worthless pests, disliking them while still using the useful services they provided. The comparison still fascinates me. At first, I wasn’t sure that the author meant to make that broader comparison here. I thought he probably used that language just to simply the ecological concepts for children’s understanding, but the author does make another comparison a little further on:

“So let’s be fair. If American-born starlings are foreigners, then so are all people in America except the Indians (Native Americans). So are many kinds of birds, animals, and plants. Our ancestors brought them here from other countries. But if all these creatures, and ourselves, are American now, then so are the starlings. Yes indeed!”

So get off your high horse, starling-haters.

At several points in the book, the author compares birds to airplanes, explaining their muscles and flying mechanisms like machinery. I liked the page where the author compares different planes and helicopters to types of birds (cruisers being like gliding eagles and albatrosses, fast-turning speed planes like starlings and swallows, and hovering helicopters like humming birds). The parts that describe how birds cling to branches as they sleep and how their wings move look accurate and helpful. The part about how a bird creates eggs is hilarious. The text about the formation of the egg inside the bird isn’t bad. It completely skips over the subject of the fertilization of eggs (understandably), and the picture show the bird as a kind of egg-making factory with little men assembling the parts of the egg in stages instead of showing a bird’s reproductive anatomy.

In the upper right corners of this section of the book, there are little squares with a flying bird because part of the book is meant to be uses as a flip book to see a bird flying. The page shown above with the boy flipping through the book shows how to use the flip book portion.

There is a section of the book that explains how baby birds develop in the egg and eventually hatch.

There is also a section in the book that shows how adult starlings will prepare a nest for their eggs and how they raise their babies.

As I was reading the book, I wondered who the author, Wilfred S. Bronson, was. Bronson was an artist specializing in natural history, and he wrote and illustrated other books for children about animals and natural history. In the years before he wrote this particular book, he served in the US Army during World War I and painted murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. He also participated in expeditions to gather specimens and create illustrations of wildlife for botanical gardens and museums.

I haven’t found a copy of this particular book to read online, but it was republished in 2008 and is still available from Amazon.

Posted on by TracyC

Fishes

Fishes by Bertha Morris Parker, 1943, 1957.

This is a reprint of an earlier book, and it’s interesting because this was part of an educational science series. The author was from the University of Chicago, and the accuracy was verified by Walter H. Chute, the Director of the John G. Shedd Aquarium at the time.

As a child, I was never particularly interested in fish. My mother had a fish tank with pet fish, but I lived pretty far from large bodies of water and never went fishing. For years, this book, probably purchased at one of the many used book sales my family attended over the years, went unread. However, as an adult, I like reading children’s books about very specific topics because they often include some fun and usual facts.

The book begins by explaining to child readers how goldfish are similar to and different from human beings. It seems pretty straight forward, but they point out some thoughtful similarities and differences. Both fish and humans need to breathe, but they do it in different ways, which is why humans drown in water and fish effectively drown in air. The book also points out that goldfish cannot move their heads independently of their bodies in the way that humans do.

In the section called “The Story of the Goldfish”, the book explains how wild goldfish were first kept as pets in China and Japan. Wild goldfish actually have a variety of colors, but hundreds of years ago in China, people liked the yellow or gold ones best as pets, and they began deliberately breeding fish with these colors, which is how they came to be known as “goldfish.”

The book defines “fish” as creatures with gills, fins, and backbones but no arms or legs. It uses this definition to separate fish from other aquatic creatures like whales (no gills, actually a mammal with lungs), jellyfish (no fins, gills, or backbone), crabs (gills but no fins, arms and an exoskeleton instead of a backbone), and starfish. It also explains the difference between fish that live in salt water vs. fish that live in fresh water.

The book explains what different types of fishes eat, how they’re born (most hatch from eggs), how they defend themselves, and how they migrate. In one section, the book explains how fish have some or all of the five senses that humans have (sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch), but they have them to different degrees and use them in different ways.

The book presents information about some specific types of fish, and it even mentions that some types of fish are endangered species. I usually associate environmental messages with the late 20th century, but this book discussed the over-fishing of sturgeon and the ecological dangers of erosion caused by deforestation on river banks and factory waste dumped in water in the mid-20th century.

The book ends with a list of tips for observing fish.

The book presents a pretty comprehensive beginner’s guide to fish in general, and I really appreciated the mentions of environmental issues. My one criticism is that the book could use more pictures and especially bigger pictures. All of the pictures are in full color, but most of them are rather small, just in the corners or edges of the pages, which are mostly full of text. I just think that larger pictures would be more appealing and more child-friendly. There are even places where the edges of the pictures and their captions are cut off by the edges of the book (as shown in two of the pictures of pages above), which looks clumsy and annoying. The book seems pretty authoritative, but I think it could have been presented better. I’m not sure how people who originally read this book looked at it, but I didn’t like the size and positioning of the illustrations.

I couldn’t find an online edition of this vintage nonfiction children’s book, but I did find online editions of other nonfiction books for children by the same author through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Bells

Bells by Elizabeth Starr Hill, illustrated by Shelly Sacks, 1970.

I love books about oddball topics, so a children’s picture book about the history of bells was irresistibly intriguing.

The book begins with the origins of bells in the Bronze Age. People had made rattles of various kinds before the Bronze Age, but after they learned to make bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, they discovered that they could make metal rattles with a much prettier sound. These metal rattles/early bells were made in the “crotal” design, which is the same shape as today’s jingle bells or sleigh bells. Other shapes of bells, like gongs and the classic bell shape may have been inspired when people realized that pleasant sounds could be made by banging bronze utensils against bronze dishes and bowls.

Bells have been used for thousands of years and have served many purposes. The oldest bell that has been found (at the time the book was written) was over 3000 years old and came from the area near Babylon. King Solomon of Israel used to have bells to frighten away birds from the roof of his temple. The Spartans were able to infiltrate a walled town in Macedonia because the sentry wore a bell on his uniform that helped them to keep track of where he was, but in other instances, nets with bells attached to them were used to warn of the presence of enemies. Bells have also been frequently used in religious services.

Sometimes, people wear bells to call attention to themselves. The classic jester’s cap with crotal bells (jingle bells) attached to it is meant to be attention-getting.

Bells can be made of many different materials, from different types of metal bells to glass bells to clay bells. There are even wooden ones, although they make more of a clunking sound than a ringing. People used to make bells by hammering pieces of metal into shape, but then they developed ways to cast bells in molds, which is how bells are made today.

There are many superstitions that have been attached both to the making of bells and their use. The book describes the Bilbie family, who famously made bells in Medieval England. The Bilbies were superstitious and consulted astrologers to determine the best times to make their bells. They also always rang bells for the first time on full moons. Various people have believed that ringing bells frightens away demons and witches.

The parts about superstitions and legends are my favorites. In particular, there is a legend in England about a town that was completely buried during an earthquake. The people in the town always rang their church bells at Christmas, and the legend is that if you go to a particular spot and put your ear against the ground, you’ll still hear them ringing the bells. However, the book says that there’s actually a scientific explanation behind the phenomenon. People who have put their ears to the ground at that spot have heard bells ringing, but they’re actually the bells from a nearby town, not one underground. The ground actually conducts sound very well, even better than sound waves moving through the air, so a person standing upright might not hear the bells ringing from another town, but someone who put their ear to the ground could hear the conducted sound vibrations. It’s not unlike the phenomena experienced by people who put their ears to the rails on railroad tracks to listen for the train. There are also stories of people having heard the approach of herds of animals, like buffalo, coming toward them in this way. The book doesn’t mention it, but “keep an ear to the ground” is actually an expression for watching and listening for signs of things that are going to happen because people noticed that vibrations in the ground could be indications of something coming toward them.

The book also describes some famous bells, like the Liberty Bell, Big Ben (Big Ben is actually the name of the bell in the clock tower, not the clock tower itself, although people informally think of the clock tower as Big Ben) and Tsar Kolokol, the largest bell in the world.

There are also a few nursery rhymes that mention bells (although the book doesn’t give any background information about the rhymes) and some information about change-ringing and carillons.

The book annoyed me a little in the way it kind of jumps around, telling some history, then some legends, then some more history, and then more legends. It’s a very easy read, and the information is interesting, but it’s a big disjointed. It sometimes feels more like a list of facts and short stories than one cohesive story. It might help if there were headings or chapter divisions in the book to organize the information, but there aren’t.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Hand Shadows

Hand Shadows to be Thrown Upon the Wall by Henry Bursill, 1859, 1967.

When I first read and started playing with this book as a kid, I didn’t stop to read the preface in the book or look at the publishing date, so I completely missed the fact that this is a reprint of a book from the late 1850s. The author, Henry Bursill (link repaired 9-11-24), was a professional artist

In the preface, Bursill refers to a well-known print from the early 19th century called The Rabbit on the Wall, which shows a father making shadow figures on the wall with his hands to amuse his children. Bursill says that there have been other books about hand shadows before his, but he emphasizes that his book is not the same as theirs because he has worked out his own hand shadows through experimentation. He says that it will take some practice for people making hand shadows to get them perfectly, but he encourages people to practice and not be afraid to work out new hand shadows of their own through experimentation. Bursill did the illustrations for the book himself, and he says that he began sketching some of the designs during his time as an art student and that he would amuse some fellow students by making hand shadows on the wall of his studio.

Other than the preface, the only words in the book are the captions on each of the pictures. I’ve tried some of the hand shadows in the book, and I had a more difficult time than the preface makes it sound. The only ones I’ve really been able to do well were the bird and the greyhound. I haven’t given up on mastering some of the more difficult ones someday, though!

The book is available to read for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

Understanding and Collecting Rocks and Fossils

Understanding and Collecting Rocks and Fossils by Martyn Bramwell, 1983.

This book is part of a series of beginning hobby guides for kids. It explains how to collect and study rocks and fossils and some of the deeper aspects of geology. The book emphasizes that studying geology helps us to understand the story of the Earth and the forces that have shaped our landscapes and formed the rocks and minerals we use. All through the book, there are suggested activities and experiments for readers, marked with the symbol of a red magnifying hand-lens.

The book explains some the large geological forces, like how the continents move and the plates that make up the Earth’s crust shift. Then, it explains the different types of rocks, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, with examples of each type.

One of the sections I found particularly interesting is the one that explains about how to identify different minerals and what they’re used for. The activity on that page explains how to identify a mineral based on a series of factors, like whether or not it’s magnetic, the color of a streak it might leave when scraped against tile, and its hardness, which you can test by seeing what implement will scratch it.

I also liked the section about crystals and gemstones. There are instructions for growing your own crystals.

The section about fossils explains how to collect fossils, clean them, make plaster molds of them, and identify what organisms made the fossils. The book explains how fossils are made and had a timeline of past eras on Earth and the creatures that existed in each era.

The last section of the book explains the types of work that geologists do and the types of geological surveys they carry out to predict earthquakes and tsunamis and finding useful deposits of ore, minerals, oil, and natural gas.

There’s quite a lot of information to take in. Even though this is a pretty beginner guide to rock collecting and geology, I would say that the book would be better suited to older children than younger ones.

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Voyage to the Planets

Voyage to the Planets by Jeff Davidson, 1990.

This was my second favorite book about outer space as a kid! It would have been the first favorite, but my first favorite had glow-in-the-dark pictures, and this one doesn’t. I bought them at the same time at a school book fair, but the one with the glow-in-the-dark pictures definitely caught my attention first. This book does, however, have pictures of the planets taken by the Voyager 2 space probe.

The beginning of the book explains a little about the solar system and its place in the galaxy and the Voyager 2 probe.

Then, it takes readers on a journey through the solar system, beginning with the sun at the center of the solar system and moving outward, planet by planet. The page about each planet explains the origin of the planet’s name in Roman mythology and gives facts about the planet, such as its size, distance from the sun, and rotation and orbit periods.

The page about Earth specifically mentions, “The Earth will only support life as long as we are careful to maintain its special conditions. If people continue to pollute the environment, the delicate balance of our planet may be destroyed forever.” Books, movies, tv shows, and teachers in public school gave us environmental messages very early in life when I was young in the 1980s and 1990s.

The book ends with Pluto as the ninth planet, which is what we were taught as kids in the early 1990s. There is no mention of “dwarf planets” or the Kuiper Belt because the book was published in 1990 and scientists didn’t find definite evidence of Kuiper Belt objects until 1992.

Posted on by TracyC

Discover the Night Sky

Discover the Night Sky by Chris Madsen and Michele Claiborne, 1989.

I bought this book at a school book fair when I was a kid, and it was my favorite book about the stars and outer space because it has glow-in-the-dark pictures. As a child, I loved anything that was glow-in-the-dark. Actually, I still do.

Every page in the book is designed to be interactive. There are pages that talk about different aspects of outer space, but the pages with the glow-in-the-dark pictures want you to guess what’s in the picture based on descriptions of it. Then, you’re supposed to turn off the light and look at the glowing picture to see what it is. You can see the what the glow-in-the-dark picture is without turning off the lights if you tilt the book and look at it at an angle or use a black light (like I did to take the pictures), but it is more fun if you really do look at it while it’s glowing in the dark. (Like other glow-in-the-dark toys, it glows better if the page has been in the light first to charge it.)

The pages after each glow-in-the-dark page have facts about the object in the glow-in-the-dark picture and an experiment for readers to do. The experiments help demonstrate the nature of the moon, stars, and planets, like what causes the phases of the moon, what causes seasons on Earth, and why you don’t see the stars during the day, even though they’re still there.

The information in the book is still factually correct, although it shows Pluto as being the last planet of the solar system. (Since people still quibble about this, I don’t consider it a big issue.) It isn’t a bad introduction to outer space for young children. The last page in the book is about the Voyager 2 space probe. Its primary mission ended around the time the book was first published, but we have contact with the space probe today (as of early 2021).

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The online version of the book doesn’t fully do it justice because you can’t take advantage of the glow-in-the-dark feature, but you can still read the text and see the experiment pages.

Posted on by TracyC

Somewhere in Africa

Somewhere in Africa by Ingrid Mennen and Niki Daly, illustrated by Nicolaas Maritz, 1990.

I didn’t read this book when I was a child, although it’s old enough that I could have, but I was fascinated when I found it in a Little Free Library because this is an American edition of a book that was originally from South Africa. I enjoyed the colorful painted pictures, and I think it’s a good book for explaining to American children what it would be like to be a kid in South Africa. For a child living in a city, life actually wouldn’t be too different from the lives of American children living in cities. Africa isn’t all savannas and animal safaris.

A boy named Ashraf lives in Africa. He doesn’t live in a place with lions, crocodiles, and zebras, though. He lives in a very busy city. Ashraf likes animals, and he reads about them in his favorite library book.

As Ashraf goes to the library, he sees all of the busy traffic of the city and passes by shops with fascinating things in their windows. In the market, there is a fruit seller singing about his products. Other people are selling flowers, and there are street musicians.

When Ashraf gets to the library, he checks out the same book about African animals again.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

Dancing with the Indians

Dancing with the Indians by Angela Shelf Medearis, illustrated by Samuel Byrd, 1991.

I love books with historical background, and this is a fascinating picture book that is based on the history of the author’s family. Like the author’s earlier book, Picking Peas for a Penny, it is told in rhyme, from the point of view of the author’s mother as a child in Oklahoma during the 1930s.

The girl and her brother are going with their parents to visit the Seminole American Indians. As they travel in their wagon, the parents explain to the children the history of their family. Many years before, the girl’s grandfather (the author’s great-grandfather) escaped from slavery and ran away to Oklahoma, where he was accepted by the Seminole tribe. Ever since, his descendants have continued to visit the tribe and join in Seminole celebrations and ceremonies as part of their extended family.

The night is an exciting celebration with dancing, drumming, and songs and stories of past triumphs.

They all dance and celebrate through the entire night, until morning. As the family returns home to tend to their farm, the father promises them that they’ll return to dance with the Indians again.

I liked this book because it explains an aspect of American history that I don’t remember being discussed much when I was in school. In fact, I think that the first time I saw anything that explained that escaping slaves sometimes headed west instead of north before the Civil War was in a Disney Adventures magazine, where they were talking about cowboy, specifically mentioning black cowboys. However, another option was for escaped slaves to join up with Native American tribes. The Seminole tribe of Florida and Oklahoma was one group that was known to accept escaped slaves and adopt them into the tribe, starting in the early 1700s continuing into the 1850s. Some of the escaped slaves married into the tribe. The African Americans who joined the Seminoles and their descendants came to be called Black Seminoles. Parts of the two cultures intermingled. Black Seminoles adopted Seminole traditions, and they also introduced Seminoles to aspects of their traditions. The relationship has had complications as well, and even in modern times, there are debates about how much Black Seminoles count as part of the tribe and how much they should be entitled to certain benefits

This is a Reading Rainbow Book. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

Picking Peas for a Penny

Picking Peas for a Penny by Angela Shelf Medearis, drawings by Charles Shaw, 1990.

This picture book is based on stories from the author’s family and is told from the point of view of her mother, when she was a child in Oklahoma in the 1930s. The story is told in rhyme with a kind of sing-song counting from one to ten as they pick peas and put them in their baskets.

The 1930s was the time of the Great Depression. Many people were out of work, but this African American family has a farm and makes money by growing and harvesting crops. It doesn’t pay much, and everyone needs to help, but because times are hard, they are glad that they are able to do the work and earn the money.

It’s hard work that takes all day in the hot sun, but the girl telling the story says that she and her brother have a little fun while they’re doing it, too. Their grandmother tells them not to goof off because they work to finish. The grandfather of the family offers the children a penny for every pound of peas they pick and says that he’ll take them into town to spend it, so the children start a pea-picking race with each other.

After the work is done, they visit the general store in town, and the children have the opportunity to buy treats for themselves. They only have pennies, but it’s enough to buy some penny candy and soda pop. After the hard work they’ve done, it feels like a rich reward.

In the back of the book, there’s a picture of the author’s family. Although the story itself doesn’t mention it, the name of the girl in the story is Angeline.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.