Puzzle of the Platypus, TheILLUSTRATED BY Ages: 9–12 Pages: 64 List Price: 17.95 Cover: Hardcover Published: 3/1/2008 ISBN: 1-59078-556-8 ISBN-13: 978-1-59078-556-0 |
Scientists probe eleven animal mysteries. Why do some parrots eat clay? Which elephants are the wisest? Is the platypus a bird, a mammal, or something else? In this collection of science articles from Highlights for Children magazine, teams of researchers travel the world to solve some of nature’s most intriguing puzzles. One team uses a high-tech camera to find polar bear dens under the snows of Alaska. Another group teaches dolphins how to play a game in order to study their sonar. Still other teams spend years studying elephants, crows, wild horses, rattlesnakes, cliff swallows, and other animals. Full-color illustrations bring these fascinating animals to life, and Jack Myers, in his warm, personal style, re-creates the scientists’ adventures in discovery. His stories are true cases of science in action—the challenging and often creative process of revealing nature’s secrets. He will start young readers thinking about the many secrets that still wait to be discovered . . . maybe by them. Reviews"In his fifth (posthumous) gathering of lightly edited columns from Highlights magazine, Myers looks with a typical balance of precision and simplicity at a clever study of dolphin sonar, a successful effort to reintroduce a nearly extinct species of wild horse to its original Mongolian range, the efforts of scientists to find a logical niche in the taxonomic scheme for the decidedly peculiar platypus, and eight other revealing experiments, observations, and discoveries. Along with the occasional color photo, each entry is illustrated with one or more of Rice’s accurately detailed paintings (some of which are amusingly fanciful), and in service to readers who want all the facts, a list of resources from which Myers drew his information is appended. As with the previous collections, these miniessays are equally suited to reading alone or aloud and make stimulating introductions to the actual practice of science." |
