David Lindo & Claire McElfatrick Books

The Extraordinary World of Birds is a hardback, quality text with a weighty feel. Beautifully illustrated and packed with information, as we would expect from Dorling Kindersley, it makes an accessible introduction to the subject for beginner bird lovers whilst still containing enough detail and depth to stimulate afficionados.

Beginning with ‘What is a Bird?’ and the evolutionary link with dinosaurs, we learn the basics of flight, the purpose of nests, the incubation of eggs and bird eating habits. Each page is well laid out with good use of colour and fonts, and the text is both clearly factual and enticingly expressive, for example ‘a forked tail makes this bird elegant and buoyant in the air’. There are plenty of snippets that the reader will immediately want to share with a “Did you know…!”, such as that a stork’s nest can weigh as much as a horse and that a diving peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world at 390 kph.

Following sections cover bird families, bird behaviour, bird habitats and ‘birds and us’, and at 80 pages there is plenty of satisfying detail here. Personally, I particularly enjoyed learning about the various bird families, such as passerines (perching birds) and flightless birds, and their intriguing behaviours, such as territorial defence and amazing migrations.

Of particular note in this book is the excellent use of photography. Far too many modern non-fiction texts aimed at children are over-reliant on stylized artwork and design, when children would benefit more from realistic images to gain real-world understanding. Here, while many of the backgrounds are illustrations, almost all of the bird images are photographic images collaged over the top.

The Extraordinary World of Birds has been excellently executed as a primer to the wonderful avian world and will be pored over by children with an interest in the natural environment.

Reviewer: Carol Carter