Book Review: KAKAPO RESCUE: SAVING THE WORLD'S STRANGEST PARROT by Sy Montgomery with photographs by Nic Bishop

1.     BIBLIOGRAPHY

Montgomery, Sy, and Nic Bishop. Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot. Boston [Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010. ISBN: 0618494170.

2.  PLOT SUMMARY

On a remote New Zealand island covered in rugged vegetation and even more rugged terrain live the rarest parrots in existence…the kakapo. The kakapo hang on the brink of extinction with so few left that each has a name and a detailed file about it. There are so few, less than 100 at the time of the book’s printing, that entire teams of scientists and volunteers work literally around the clock to ensure their survival. The kakapos’ food is carefully monitored, their mating habits tracked, their eggs incubated and their hatchlings raised by hand. Kakapo Rescue tells the unique story of the fight to save these endangered birds, with stunning photography capturing each defining moment in their lives and the lives of the people who struggle to help them.

3.     CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Strangest Parrot is well written with vivid photographs illustrating the text. Montgomery and Bishop actually traveled to Codfish Island where, for ten days, they lived among the birds and volunteers. Their direct experiences give an authenticity to their book that also makes it impossible to ignore.

The story of the kakapo is told in several short, manageable chapters, with each chapter illustrating a different aspect of the efforts to rescue the birds. For example, chapter four describes the elation of Lisa laying an egg and taking exceptional care of it. The volunteers watch the egg and Lisa via tiny cameras, strategically placed. The chick, when it hatches, thrives under Lisa’s care. In the fight against extinction, each egg laid is cause for celebration, and each egg that hatches is a gala event.

Chapter six however, finds Lisa’s chick dead. An autopsy of its tiny body shows a sharp-edged seed tore open its stomach. The mourning of the people is tangible as Montgomery and Bishop capture the moments in words and pictures.

By the end of the book, the reader will care deeply about a parrot he or she had never heard of prior to his or her reading of the book. The reader will comb the pages of facts at the end of the book, trying to learn how many parrots still live. He or she will go to the kakapo rescue website and learn that since the book’s publication the numbers of kakapo have swelled to almost 130. And the reader will rejoice.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

Robert F. Sibert Medal Book

Starred Review, BOOKLIST: “Montgomery’s delight in her subject is contagious, and throughout her enthusiastic text, she nimbly blends scientific and historical facts with immediate, sensory descriptions of fieldwork. Young readers will be fascinated.”

 

Starred Review, KIRKUS: “Under the careful supervision of forest rangers and volunteers on an island off the New Zealand coast, the nearly extinct, flightless Kakapo parrot is the object of an intensive rescue effort described by this experienced writer-photographer team...As always, the photographer's remarkable and clearly reproduced photographs support and enhance the text. The book's careful design is unobtrusive: The progress of an opening egg sets off page numbers, and fern patterns provide a subtle decoration. Bibliography and a website encourage readers' further explorations. Wonderful.”

Starred Review, SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: “Take a parrot. Color it green. Give it soft, fluffy feathers, and whiskers. Give it sumo proportions and take away its power of flight. Make it nocturnal, and have it nest underground. Aha! A kakapo!...Excellent photos and a readable, conversational text provide an intimate look at a concerted effort to save a drastically endangered species unfamiliar to most of the world outside Down Under. Readers who enjoyed this author/photographer team’s The Tarantula Scientist (2007) or Quest for the Tree Kangaroo (2006, both Houghton) will gobble up this tribute to ecological science in action.”

5. CONNECTIONS

*Kakapo Rescue will make a fantastic introduction to a study of endangered species and fragile ecosystems.

*Other books about endangered species:

Dobson, David. CAN WE SAVE THEM? ENDANGERED SPECIES OF NORTH AMERICA. ISBN: 0881068225.

Jenkins, Steve. ALMOST GONE: THE WORLD’S RAREST ANIMALS. ISBN: 0060536004.

Mackey, Richard. THE ATLAS OF ENDANGERED SPECIES: REVISED AND UPDATED. ISBN: 0520258622.