Birds of a Feather

K-Gr 4—This lush cocoa-table book is atlas-size and dependent on its elegant graphics. The heavy pages are designed with flaps, pop-ups, and even interlocking jigsaw-puzzle-type pieces. A silhouette of a crowned crane lifts to show the colorful whole, with a note that the birds dance while courting. A cockatoo profile lifts to show the bird in toto, with a note that some are thought to be extinct in the wild. Colorful wings lift one by one across a spread to disclose the bird beneath. Flaps for a multitude of speckled eggs lift to tell readers who they belong to, with a pertinent fact about each species. Most challenging of all are a series of four pages of strips that, when matched properly, present six different birds. Most species covered in the book are European, African, or Asian and not likely to be seen in North America. Because of its heft, the book is unwieldy and needs sturdy bracing for young hands to hold. All that aside, this is a handsome, polished work, rich in style, luxurious in color, and certainly a feast for the eyes.—Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY