A Place to Start a Family: Poems About Creatures That Build

There are many builders in the animal kingdom, builders who use sticks and grass and hair and mud and spit and other materials they can scrounge up or create to build nests, some of quite extraordinary design. And when people think of nests, they most often will think of birds, but the reality is many animals build nests and the variety is endless. People might not think of fish as nest-building creatures, but of the dozen animal builders listed, two are fish. The three-spined stickleback fish actually builds a tunnel nest from plant material and sand while the artistic white-spotted pufferfish spends days arranging sand and seashells into a design nest. Spiders, snakes, rodents, and more fill the pages in this lovely book.

Poet and writer David L. Harrison has developed a charming collection of poems about a variety of creatures with a mixture of poetic forms. Excellent informational back-matter will keep youngsters learning. The cut-paper art Giles Laroche created to illustrate these poems are the perfect complement to Harrison’s writing. Youngsters will enjoy finding the fine details in the illustrations while being captured by the fresh rhythm and rhymes of the poems.