Family Ties: Raising Wild Babies - Hardcover

Dewey, Jennifer

9780761450375: Family Ties: Raising Wild Babies

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761450378 ISBN 13: 9780761450375

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Corp/Ccb, 1998

A thoughtful collection of true stories focuses on the habits and habitats of coyotes, owls, bears, bobcats, and ravens, and what they must do to survive, showing the amazing bonds that exist within animal families.

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From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-7-This collection of short stories, based on observations of wild animals, represents the author's attempt to examine "the kinship we share." The five tales detail the lives of an owl, a coyote family, a bobcat, a raven, and a bear. Each one looks at families with an emphasis on the relationship between a mother and her young. In one story, for example, an owl protects her babies even while she's dying from a rattlesnake bite. In another, a young bobcat must learn to survive on his own when an accident separates him from his mother. All of the stories clearly show a lot of time spent in observing the creatures and a great deal of feeling for them. While Dewey avoids anthropomorphism for the most part, in a few instances that line is crossed, such as when a coyote is described as having tears in her eyes from the pain of giving birth. Also, animals are sometimes described as "cranky." These are minor points, though, and mostly the creatures do remain true to their natures. A more glaring problem appears in the last story. Here, a bear's viewpoint alternates with that of an old man who has devoted his life to protecting bears from people. This introduction of a human character shatters the carefully constructed all-animal world of the other stories and thus seems out of place in the collection. While by no means a necessary purchase, these are pleasant, although rather slight stories that should satisfy young nature lovers.
Arwen Marshall, New York Public Library
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Gr. 4-6. Dewey, author most recently of Mud Matters and a keen observer of nature, presents actual episodes in the lives of five wild animals--from the animals' points of view. She expertly walks a fine line, not bestowing names or other anthropomorphic traits upon her subjects, but giving them dreams, feelings, and recognizable motivations and behavior: a mother owl half paralyzed by a rattlesnake bite hangs on long enough to see her nestlings fly; wanderlust prompts an adventurous, one-eyed raven to leave the safety of his colony; a very young bobcat takes makeshift measures to survive after being separated from his mother and sister; a coyote stays on to care for his aging mother after his littermates leave. Only in the final episode, about an old gardener who freely lets bears feast in his orchard, do humans appear. Dewey illustrates each story with accomplished pencil portraits. Give this slender eye-opener to readers ready to graduate from the picture books of naturalists such as Jim Arnosky and Joanne Ryder. John Peters

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