BOOKS: Simon & Schuster Children’s Guide to Birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

S i m o n & Schuster Childre n ’s
Guide to Birds, by Jinny
Johnson, with Dr. Malcolm
Ogilvie. Simon & Schuster (1230
Avenue of the Americas, New York,
NY 10020), 1996. 96 pages, illustrated,
$19.95 hardcover.

What gets children interested in
birdwatching––a dull class, a window, and
a bird outside, or a nice big book full of colorful
creatures called titmice and jackass
penguins? Maybe it’s both. Unfortunately,
pages the size of workbooks make this otherwise
excellent basic guide a bit difficult to
conceal, open, in a lap beneath a
desk––and it’s too big to take out into the
field in a pocket, too. But then, children
are more likely to do their early species
identification from indoors, anyway.