BOOKS: For Children

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

Crossing Paths:
Uncommon Encounters with
Animals in the Wild
by Craig Childs
Sasquatch Books (615 2nd Ave.,
Suite 260, Seattle, WA 98104), 1997.
Paperback, 256 pages. $14.95.

According to the publisher, Craig
Childs “camps in the back country at least
nine months of the year, usually living in
the back of his truck, out of a river vessel of
some sort, or from his backpack. He hasn’t
had a phone in seven years.”

His book is pitched at adults, and
his stories of meeting this animal and that
make good reading for anyone interested in
animals, but are child-friendly, much like
the early works of the late British naturalist
Gerald Durrell, with just the right comic
touch to lighten ecological lessons.
The Sasquatch Books people could
easily break these 256 pages up into as many
as five books, adding illustrations as appropriate,
and hit the school library and juvenile
gift markets. And if Childs stays out on
the western range, he’ll undoubtedly produce
many equally enthralling sequels.

Paloma: A Love Story
by Douglas A. Cox
Seven Locks Press (POB 25689, Santa
Ana, CA 92799), 1997. Paperback,
44 pages. $12.95 plus $4.00 p&h.

Writes watercolorist Douglas A.
Cox: “Many years ago, I was a hunter. One
beautiful California evening at dusk, the last
of the feeding birds rose out of the fields and
came across the fields where I stood. I
raised my shotgun and squeezed the trigger…I
went to retrieve my dead prize and
found instead a still living, mortally wounded
mourning dove. She was beautiful. I felt
weak and foolish and helpless. I knew at
that moment I would never hunt again.”
P a l o m a tells the story in gently
captioned paintings, which do justice to the
grace of birds, the beauty of nature, and the
difficulty of his subject.

How Willy Got His Wheels
by Deborah Turner
& Diana Mohler
Illustrated by Rhonda McHugh
Doral (8560 SW Salish Lane,
Suite 300, Wilsonville, OR 97010),
1998. Hardcover, 32 pages. $14.95.

Willy the young Chihuahua has
paralyzed hind legs. The veterinarian who
adopts him out apparently doesn’t know
about dog wheels, more often used for
older dogs with displasia, but the young
lady who takes Willy discovers the use of
wheels by experimenting with a skateboard.