Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, that was itself covered by a larger rock, you likely already know that Baby Birds : An Artist Looks into the Nest by Julie Zickefoose was officially published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt today.
The challenge now is going to be devising the best way to approach it for a review. After all, reviewing a collection of illustrations is one matter while reviewing a series of detailed ornithological observations is quite another. But as all who know Ms. Zickefoose’s work can attest, her works generously span both these categories.
And as Baby Birds, depicting and describing as it does the complete nestling period of seventeen species of North American birds, is reported to be – and to my first glance shows every indication that such reports are correct – her most ambitious work yet published, it’s clear that I’m going to be spending quite a lot of time with it on my reading stand, probably with a nice cup of tea… and the dog on my lap.
Let no one ever tell you the life of a book reviewer is an easy one.
