Rattlesnake Dance - Softcover

Dewey, Jennifer Owings

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1563978776 ISBN 13: 9781563978777

Publisher: Boyds Mills Press, 2000

At the age of nine, the author was bitten by a rattlesnake and thought the local hospital had no antivenin, she managed to survive. A year later she observed Hopi snake dances and saw the Hopi hold rattlers in their mouths while performing a rain dance. As an adult she witnessed the "rattlesnake dance" between two male rattlers vying for superiority. The author writes with candor and grace of her encounters with rattlesnakes, and the stories she relates are illustrated with powerful color drawings.

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About the Author:

Jennifer Owings Dewey is the author of Wildlife Rescue, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 3-6. In a simple, compelling text, Dewey invites readers to share three of her personal experiences with rattlesnakes in her native New Mexico. The first is a traumatic, life-threatening episode involving a snakebite at the age of nine. The second describes her awe at a Hopi rain dance, watching the dancers handle snakes?including rattlers?with seeming impunity. The third, years later, depicts her wonder at observing two male rattlers jousting for dominance. These engrossing memories are embroidered with informative boxes of scientific facts and folklore about rattlesnakes, and the whole is handsomely enriched by Dewey's elegant, exquisitely detailed pencil illustrations and scientific diagrams. Two problems exist: one small, one not so small. In a listing of rattlesnake enemies, vultures are not mentioned, but one is depicted in the drawing. A distribution map of "Species of Rattlesnakes" includes the cottonmouth and the copperhead. Both of these snakes belong to the family of pit vipers (Crotalidae), which includes rattlesnakes, but they are not members of a rattlesnake genus, and have no rattles. Otherwise, a fascinating read.?Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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