I canвЂ™t promise the book will convert a tween in your orbit whose passion for birding is more your wishful thinking than the kidвЂ™s true direction. вЂњI hope kids who pick this up will go on to be bird advocates,вЂќ she said.ДЄs for the target kid, this book is best for a child already showing interest in wild birds. Throughout the book DeWitz includes blurbs about conservation, community science, attracting birds to your yard, and resources to check out like eBird, all in kid-approachable language that might inspire respect for birds and wildlife. Photos and descriptions accompany each bird, but not maps since the book is both specific and general for a region. To that end, this attractive soft cover book introduces the reader to birds in two parts: It begins with an introduction to basic bird facts and identification tips and then merges into a beautiful photo-illustrated field guide for over 50 commonly seen birds in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia. So you will see similar small birds like chickadees and Bushtits instead.

вЂњI wanted kids to be able to easily identify any bird they might see that occurs in the areas covered by the book,вЂќ she said.

So while Wrentits are charming birds you might see in Oregon, they didnвЂ™t make it to this book because they are not present throughout the region. As a resident of Oregon, she knows Pacific Northwest birds well and purposely included birds found throughout the region, not all specific to her area. She was also filling a vacuum for kids birding books for a region not yet well represented: the Pacific Northwest-also known as Cascadia-of the continental U.S. вЂњI wanted to create a foundation that was easy to read with fun facts, and that was also a field guide for birds most readily seen where live.вЂќ Having photographed birds for years, she had a voluminous collection of photos to draw from when developing her book. вЂњI was motivated because I didnвЂ™t see a book for this age group,вЂќ DeWitz shared over the phone. DeWitz aspired to fill this need to meet kids where they are now in order to capture their interest in birds. While I made do at the time and eventually grew to understand these guides, it never dawned on me that such a book could be redeveloped for a kid reader to be easier to follow as a beginner birder. When I was a kid getting into birding, I relied on the old standbys developed for adult birders: illustrated field guides with maps and language designed for seasoned adult birders. As a former middle school teacher, and now full-time photographer and author, natural history was a focus of her teaching to tweens, and it shows in her upbeat, conversational, and photo-filled book.

Karen DeWitzвЂ™s new book, Look at That Bird!: A Young NaturalistвЂ™s Guide to Pacific Northwest Birding, fills an age niche for which she saw a gap in the market: kids ages 9 to 12. and Canada for both adults and children, and authors are responding to the interest with books for practically every age level and birding region. Birding has exploded as a pastime in the U.S. If youвЂ™re a kid interested in birds, youвЂ™re in luck.

Pacific northwest birds