And So They Build

The author-illustrator of Somewhere Today takes a close-up look at some of the animal kingdom's best architects, explaining how and why they build their incredible structures.

They build ingenious structures--umbrella-roofed houses, self-heating mound-homes and bowers painted in tasteful blueberry-blue. But these designers are untutored: they include the cubiterme termite, the harvest mouse, the swallow and the fastidious "bowl-and-doily" spider. Kitchen ( Animal Alphabet ) records a dozen startlingly distinctive building traditions in elegant spreads, with explanatory prose facing his characteristically luxuriant and precise watercolor-and-gouache paintings. Beautiful and scientifically accurate, the illustrations will lure even the slightly curious. The text, ever accessible, explains not only what these creatures build, but why: to protect their eggs, to trap their food, to shelter their young, etc. While Kitchen's book takes a more elementary approach than, for example, Bruce Brooks's Nature by Design , even adult artists and engineers will be inspired by the creativity and diversity of his subjects. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An artist known for his elegant sense of design and meticulous paintings (Animal Alphabet, 1984, ALA Notable) depicts 12 animal-built structures: Australia's mallee fowl make self- warming nests of composting vegetable matter covered with sand, controlling the temperature until their eggs hatch; Africa's Cubeterme termites build columns of soil, riddled with chambers for different functions and topped with an umbrella-like cap to ``divert torrential rain''; a pregnant harvest mouse weaves a nest of still-rooted grasses, so that the nest continues to rise to greater safety. Birds predominate here, but a frog, spider, and fish are also included. Kitchen's concise descriptions are almost as lucid as his beautifully composed pictures. He's content simply to present these fascinating animal behaviors, leaving readers to make their own generalizations; but he offers so much variety, and so many implicit commonalities, that the book is sure to engender rational insights--as well as wonder at nature's fecund ingenuity. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 4-10) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 3-5. In an intriguing thematic approach, noted illustrator Kitchen--Animal Alphabet (1984); Animal Numbers (1987)--examines 12 different animal builders and the design purposes behind each of their unique constructions. From satin bowerbirds to swallows, from cubiterme termites to harvest mice, the animals profiled vary from the exotic to the familiar. With each animal, Kitchen provides an information-laden paragraph or two about the animal's lifestyle and building activities on the left-hand page and an exquisitely detailed portrait of the animal and its construction within a natural landscape on the right-hand page (although the tiny termites are not readily visible in the painting of their large, umbrella-shaped nests). While it is disappointing that Kitchen fails to include either resource notes or a bibliography of suggested titles for further reading, this handsome picture book for older readers provides a fascinating glimpse of some of the architectural wonders to be found within the animal world and will be a welcome addition to most natural-history collections. Annie Ayres