A true story about a truly strange bird and its people

"Kakapo Rescue"
Written by Sy Montgomery,  photographs by Nic Bishop
Part of the "Scientists in the Field" Series
Recommended grades: 5th-7th 

Sy Collins, a children’s nonfiction author, and Nic Bishop, a wildlife photographer, had to wait years to be given the opportunity to visit a remote island in New Zealand that only scientists, wildlife rescue volunteers, and occasional writers and photographers are allowed to step foot on. This island is called Codfish Island in English, or Whenua Hou in the local Maori language, and it contains the only known wild population of Kakapo in the world.

Kakapo are a large, flightless, nocturnal species of green parrots, which were driven to the brink of extinction when humans brought rats, cats, and dogs to an island ecosystem that had evolved for millions of years with no mammals.

At the beginning of the book, only 87 Kakapo exist in the whole world. By the end of the book, will that number go up, or tragically, will their numbers shrink even further? The scientists and volunteers working on the project hope to see new baby kakapo while the visitors are there, as it is finally a breeding year for the birds – which breed less than once a year, only during the seasons when a local tree species produces extra fruits.

The photographs are clear and informative. They seamlessly combine with the text to bring the reader right into the New Zealand forest with the authors. They also show the beauty of the wildness of the surrounding area, and many other interesting animal species that live nearby.

This is written and laid out like an expanded narrative article from a popular science magazine such as National Geographic. It includes action, adventure, heartbreak, and brief character portraits of the birds and their human helpers. It is gripping and informative, and it also has long asides about both the natural and human history of the wildlife and its conflicts with people, as well as the New Zealand conservation movement.

The only thing separating this book from a nonfiction work for adults are the abundance of photographs, and the fact that niche scientific jargon, and advanced technical jargon, is explained, succinctly.

However, not all of the science is expanded on. Fundamental biological principles like natural selection, endangered species, extinction, the basic “one plus one equals three” arithmetic of animal husbandry, and historical subjects like the outlines of colonization and the traveling of the Maori people are mentioned, but not explained in detail.

In this way, the text doesn’t hold the readers’ hand, and it never talks down to the reader. This would be a very refreshing find for a certain age of child who has had enough of the extremely basic facts one finds in other, broader nonfiction books on the natural world written for this age range.

My only reservation on recommending this book for children who like animals and adventure, and who are around 10 to 12 years old, is that the format really does make it look like a picture book, less advanced than the chapter fiction books they are also assigned for reading. If they have reservations about this, feel free to introduce them to the adult concept of a “coffee table book”, that format which adults have no shame in purchasing for themselves. Tell them this is just a small, well-written, "coffee table book" for any people old enough to understand it. That's not even a lie.

Word count: 545