{"id":43701,"date":"2024-05-11T22:22:54","date_gmt":"2024-05-12T02:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=43701"},"modified":"2024-05-11T22:22:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T02:22:54","slug":"review-of-bird-girl-written-by-jill-esbaum-illustrated-by-rebecca-gibbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=43701","title":{"rendered":"Review of Bird Girl, written by Jill Esbaum, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Bird Girl<\/p>\n

Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World<\/em><\/p>\n

written by Jill Esbaum
\nillustrated by Rebecca Gibbon<\/p>\n

Calkins Creek, 2024. 44 pages.
\nReview written April 30, 2024, from a library book.
\nStarred Review<\/p>\n

Bird Girl<\/em> is a picture book biography of Gene Stratton-Porter. Many years ago, I read A Girl of the Limberlost<\/em>, and I expected the story of her life as an author. Instead, the book told about her fascination with studying and caring for birds and her groundbreaking work as a nature photographer who photographed birds in their natural settings.<\/p>\n

And then I remembered that I learned from her novels how important it is for farmers to leave trees on the edges of their fields – because then birds will help them eliminate pests. And that was only a bit of the nature lore in her novels.<\/p>\n

The book is bright and colorful and uses entertaining anecdotes to tell the story. When she was a girl, she hid a hawk’s droppings from her farmer father so he wouldn’t know where the nest was and kill it. Later, when he did shoot down a hawk, she took care of it and befriended it until its wing healed. <\/p>\n

As an adult, Gene Stratton-Porter had a house with a conservatory that had windows with special hatches so birds could come and go, and she kept food for birds throughout her house.<\/p>\n

She began photographing birds because the illustrations a magazine wanted to use for her stories were drawings of stuffed birds in unnatural positions. She learned to photograph and develop her own film – and then she went out into the nearby Limberlost swamp to take the pictures.<\/p>\n

She fights through spongy muck and tangled undergrowth – rattlesnake territory – to reach the hollow tree where a vulture nests. She goes back time and again to capture the world’s first photo series of a growing vulture chick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She ended up with a vast knowledge of wildlife acquired through patient observation that began when she was a child. And her story shows kids the power of a quirky obsession.<\/p>\n

jillesbaum.com<\/a>
\nrebeccagibbon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Nonfiction\/bird_girl.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bird Girl Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World written by Jill Esbaum illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon Calkins Creek, 2024. 44 pages. Review written April 30, 2024, from a library book. Starred Review Bird Girl is a picture book biography of Gene Stratton-Porter. Many years ago, I read A Girl of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,11,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-childrens-nonfiction-review","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43701"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43757,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43701\/revisions\/43757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}