A joyful primer on the pleasures of bird-watching merges haiku, notes for identifying species, and exquisite watercolor illustrations.
In spare and graceful words, poet and birder Michael J. Rosen captures the forecasting call of the mysterious cuckoo as well as essential characteristics of more than twenty commonly seen North American birds. This artfully compiled fi eld notebook — enriched by the evocative artwork of watercolorist Stan Fellows — captures the excitement of recognizing a bird, whether a darting kingfi sher, a wandering wild turkey, or a chirpy house sparrow.
Michael J. Rosen has written and edited more than sixty books for children and adults, including A DRIVE IN THE COUNTRY and DON'T SHOOT! CHASE R.'S TOP TEN REASONS NOT TO MOVE TO THE COUNTRY. He lives on one hundred forested acres in central Ohio.
Stan Fellows has illustrated several books for children, including JOHN MUIR: AMERICA'S FIRST ENVIRONMENTALIST by Kathryn Lasky. He lives in Iowa City.
Greetings and thanks for welcoming me into your home. Since I write books for both young readers and adults, I've cooked up two long-winded paragraphs.
Kids first: So, I'm the author of some four dozen books for children of all ages. The fall of 2011 brings four new titles: MY DOG! A Kid's Guide to Keeping a Happy & Healthy Dog (the idea go-to dog guide for families); a pop-up book with Robert Sabuda, Chanukah Lights, which just received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly: "A stunning achievement"; The Hound Dog's Haiku and Other Poems for Dog Lovers, illustrated with Mary Azarian's woodcuts; and Night of the Pumpkinheads, illustrated entirely with extraordinary jack-o'-lanterns. Other favorites are The Cuckoo's Haiku and Other Poems for Birders; Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm (which I both wrote and illustrated with some 400 photographs); A Drive in the Country; Don't Shoot!; A School for Pompey Walker, and Elijah's Angel. (And, yes, there's the Britiish Michael--no "J."--Rosen whose many books are often confused with mine.) For over 35 years, ever since working as a counselor, water-safety instructor, and art teacher at local community centers, I've been engaged with young children, their parents and teachers. As a visiting author, in-service speaker, and workshop leader, I frequently travel to schools and conferences around the nation, sharing stories, poems, creativity, and humor.
Several of my books here show my work as editor/anthologist or illustrator. It has been my privilege to have enlisted hundreds of other authors and artists to create 15 philanthropic books that aid in the fight to end childhood hunger through Share Our Strength's national efforts, or that offer care to less fortunate companion animals through The Company of Animals Fund, a granting program I administered for a dozen years.
Now, for adults. I can start by saying I'm a poet. I went to Columbia from 1979-1981, and received my MFA there. Poems are now collected in three volumes, which are all featured here at Amazon. Moving home to Ohio, I worked as an illustrator (while in NYC, I began selling spot illustrations to The New Yorker and Gourmet magazines); one of my first real clients was The Thurber House, the soon-to-be-restored home of Columbus's native son, James Thurber. For almost twenty years, I helped to restore the home, develop the programs there, and edit much of Thurber's uncollected work. (Those volumes are also featured here.) It was there, I began to edit short story anthologies, commission great writers to contribute to books about dogs, horses, and even VW Beetles. That's also where I started Mirth of a Nation, a three-volume humor biennial that constitutes almost 2,000 pages of the best contemporary humor.
Most recently, I've been working in humorous nonfiction. No Dribbling the Squid features profiles of 70-some of the world's most wayward competitions. (You can see the Web site and Facebook pages, as well.) And, most recently, there's Any Body's Guess: Quirky Quizzes About What Makes You Tick.
Otherwise, my Website has a good deal about my life on the 100-acre farm I share in Central Ohio. Thanks again for reading along with me.
www.fidosopher.com
for lots more about MY DOG!, including recipes, training tips, cool projects, games, and so forth: www.workman.com/mydog
This review is from: The Cuckoo's Haiku: and Other Birding Poems (Hardcover)
I occasionally like watching birds out a kitchen window or when sitting quietly beneath a tree. I'm not a birder, but after looking through and reading THE CUCKOO'S HAIKU AND OTHER BIRDING POEMS, I found myself wanting to purchase a pair of binoculars and waking up early in the morning to go look for some pretty birds. The book examines twenty-four different birds by dividing the birds into seasons. Each bird is featured in brilliant watercolors on its own page with a haiku that reveals something about the bird. Both the haikus and illustrations are beautiful. Besides the haiku, there are a few notes about the bird on each page. The book concludes with several pages where the author gives a few more sentences to each bird explaining how the haiku for that bird developed and why certain words were used. The birds in the book are the Eastern Bluebird, Canada Goose, American Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal, American Crow, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Mourning Dove, Chimney Swift, Belted Kingfisher, Barred Owl, Great Blue Heron, Pleated Woodpecker, Northern Mockingbird, Common Grackle, Cedar Waxwing, White-breasted Nuthatch, European Starling, American Robin, Black-billed Cuckoo, Dark-eyed Junco, Wild Turkey, Blue Jay, House Sparrow, and the Purple Finch.
THE CUCKOO'S HAIKU is marketed as a children's book and though children can enjoy the book, the book also makes an excellent gift for adults who like to go birding. I could easily see the book being used as a field book by a grandparent as they go birding with their grandchildren.
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This review is from: The Cuckoo's Haiku: and Other Birding Poems (Hardcover)
This is a seriously gorgeous book. Downright stunning, actually. A poetry volume cleverly disguised as a field guide that offers beautifully written haiku on twenty-four birds. As if the prose weren't enough, the pages are also filled with most wondrous watercolors by Stan Fellows.
The selections are arranged by season, beginning with the Eastern Bluebird of Spring and closing with the Purple Finch of Winter. Brilliant colors appear in the plumage of Golden Finches, Cardinals and Blue Jays. Even the American Robin, which is so common in our own backyard, is spectacular here with her puffed orange breast and white speckled throat. She sings "cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up!" Every detail of the book is carefully arranged, right down to the perfectly chosen fonts.
Author Michael J. Rosen says "Now I live on a 100-acre farm in the foothills of the Appalachians. Writing about wildlife is really writing about my own life." He offers us a delightful peek at what he is privy to on a daily basis. Here there are feeders heavy with Purple Finches, Morning Doves building their nests and Belted Kingfishers catching fresh fish for dinner. Pileated Woodpeckers drum in the forest while the sky turns black with by the wings of a thousand Starlings.
It's lovely to find a book such as this - a children's book that is just as much a joy for adults as well. Readers of any age will take so much pleasure in this volume. If readers are not already fascinated by birds, this is an amazing introduction to the how amazing bird watching can be. Be prepared to be hooked, as this is one book far too beautiful to be relegated to the bookshelf.
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