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Predator and Prey: A Conversation in Verse

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Predator and Prey: A Conversation in Verse

Hardcover

$18.99

Hardcover
$18.99

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Overview

Who is the predator, and who is the prey? Illuminating poetry and vivid artwork capture the awe-inspiring ways that creatures use their resources to stay alive.

Who wins, the assassin bug or the spider? The bat or the frog? The ant or the honey bee? The male firefly . . . or the female? The battle for survival between predator and prey is sometimes a fight, sometimes a dance, and often involves spying, lying, or even telling the truth to get ahead. Biologist and debut author Susannah Buhrman-Deever explores these clashes in poems and prose explanations that offer both sides of the story. With beautiful, realistic illustrations that are charged with drama, Bert Kitchen captures the breathtaking moments when predator meets prey. Readers who hunger for more about the art of survival will find an extensive list of references in the back.

Product Details
About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763695330
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.40(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Susannah Buhrman-Deever is a biologist with a PhD in animal behavior from Cornell University. In addition to her academic work and writing, she has developed inquiry-based ecology curricula for children. Predator and Prey is her first book for children. She lives with her family in upstate New York.

Bert Kitchen has illustrated more than seventeen books for children. He has worked as an animator, textile designer, fine artist, and commercial artist. He lives and works in London.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

05/20/2019
In paired poems, Buhrman-Deever explores the perspectives and relationships between specific sets of predator and prey as well as defense mechanisms, including protective coloration and mimicry. The poems, sometimes for two voices (reminiscent of Paul Fleischman’s Joyful Noise), are uneven: “I am hungry/ for love. Flashing,/ I seek you”; “Flower nectar, a scent so sweet/ detected from the air.” Text boxes explain the relationship between the depicted creatures and bolster the poetry with compelling facts, such as the tactics chickadees use to fend off voracious sharp-shinned hawks or the way one firefly tricks another by mimicking its distinctive flash pattern. Kitchen’s realistic watercolor and gouache illustrations, occasionally presented on gatefold spreads, match the verses’ directness, adroitly showing these creatures and their environments by rendering fine details such as tangled ribbons of grass, geometrically patterned scales, and the brushy texture of a squirrel’s tail. Ages 6–9. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Predator and prey face off in a battle of poems...Text boxes supplement the poems and illustrations with information about the animals, and clever gatefolds in some spreads allow Kitchen's sumptuous illustrations full command by tucking the text inside the folds. An effective presentation of science through poetry, art, and stellar bookmaking.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Kitchen’s realistic watercolor and gouache illustrations, occasionally presented on gatefold spreads, match the verses’ directness, adroitly showing these creatures and their environments by rendering fine details such as tangled ribbons of grass, geometrically patterned scales, and the brushy texture of a squirrel’s tail.
—Publishers Weekly

Content and cadence are cleverly aligned with the actual behaviors of the animals, and the structure and layouts of the poems also echo traits of the creatures: the words in the blue jay poem are spaced apart, and readers must move their heads back and forth to read them, mimicking the jay’s head movements as it ponders its choice of meal. Illustrations are in soft-focus, with stippled green and brown landscapes, though some of the animals are hard to spot within these environs.
—The Horn Book

Two voices are needed for many of the poems in ‘Predator and Prey’ (Candlewick, 24 pages, $18.99), a picture book for children ages 6-9 written by biologist Susannah Buhrman-Deever, with muted watercolor and gouache paintings by Bert Kitchen. Each page spread captures a fraught moment of confrontation between relatively unsung opponents. So we don’t see that well-known fellow, the lion, stalking a smaller mammal in the veldt; rather, here are face-offs between creatures such as the Sharp-Shinned Hawk and the Chickadee, and the Pacific Rattlesnake and the Ground Squirrel.
—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

04/01/2019
Gr 2–5-Predators and their prey speak about their relationships in a variety of performance-worthy poems. Biologist Buhrman-Deever presents information about 10 combinations, from an Australian assassin bug and spiders to a Puerto Rican racer (a snake) and a crested anole lizard. Each spread contains a short explanation plus a brief poem or two, sometimes told in dual perspectives. These free verse poems have occasional rhyme and satisfying repeated sounds. The language is carefully chosen and the placement of text is nicely varied. Kitchen's watercolor and gouache naturalistic paintings show these creatures in their usual habitat, often in extensive landscapes. Unusual for a picture book, the extensive bibliography cites sources mostly from professional journals, often representing particular research studies. These specific examples work well together to demonstrate a breadth of predator-prey behavior. The featured predators and prey come from all over the world but include familiar animals such as blue jays and squirrels. VERDICT An obvious choice for classrooms studying animal behavior.-Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD

School Library Journal

★ 2019-01-28
Predator and prey face off in a battle of poems.
The dramatic encounters of predators and their prey, portrayed here in poetry and watercolor-and-gouache illustrations, do not always result in the death of the prey. Sometimes the stalked creatures fight back! Ground squirrels wave their tails, telling rattlesnakes the element of surprise has been lost. Tiger moths jam the big brown bats' echolocation. A female Pennsylvania firefly acts the "femme fatale" when it tricks male big dipper fireflies and eats them—dinner instead of love! Such encounters are effectively depicted in verse and art, fine bookmaking complementing both. Nicely paced and rhythmic poetry, usually in the first person, colorfully brings to life each creature's character and modus operandi. "I am patient. / I am primed. / I am coiled muscle, / expertly designed. / I am loaded spring / I am … / LIGHTNING!" says the Pacific rattlesnake. The rhythms evoke the march of the ant armies, the "vocal stealth" of chickadees, the boasting of the feisty crested anole lizard: " 'Cuz I'm buff! / And I'm tough! / And you know I've got the stuff!" Text boxes supplement the poems and illustrations with information about the animals, and clever gatefolds in some spreads allow Kitchen's sumptuous illustrations full command by tucking the text inside the folds.
An effective presentation of science through poetry, art, and stellar bookmaking. (bibliography) (Informational picture book/poetry. 6-10)

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