Animal Life

While getting ready for summer reading adventure outreach I have found myself drawn to animal books:

Seven-Footer Press's amazing Life Size Zoo, which will not only appeal to the upper elementary school audience that is the bread-and-butter audience for SRA but also a lot of the ESL tweens to whom I speak. The pictures in this book are amazing, making the animals accessible to kids who will never get a chance to come anywhere near them, and the information in this book supplements those pictures in a really fun way.

Kelly Milner Halls gives readers a tale about animals and the people who fought for them in Saving the Baghdad Zoo: a true story of hope and heroes. This moving story centers around Army Captain William Sumner, sent as an archaeologist to Iraq to preserve cultural treasures after the bombing of the city. The treasures he and a team of international volunteers ended up saving were the denizens of the Baghdad zoo, including pelicans, bears, lions, and priceless arabian horses.

One last, compulsively readable nonfiction book that I will admit I picked up solely for the cover is Rescue Ink: How Ten Guys Saved Countless Dogs And Cats, Twelve Horses, Five Pigs, One Duck, And A Few Turtles which, according to the cover, is about to become a reality tv show. This is the story of a group of large, burly and tattooed men who convince abusive animal owners to either treat their animals the way they ought to be treated (helping them to do so) or relinquish their ownership. I was prepared not to liek this book and found myself wondering what Batso, Big Mike, Angel and the guys would do next. Too bad we won't get the show in Canada.