Skip to main content

Chasing Cheetahs: The Race to Save Africa's Fastest Cats

Chasing Cheetahs:  The Race to Save Africa's Fastest Cats
by Sy Montgomery, photographs by Nic Bishop
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.  77 pgs.  Nonfiction

    Hands down cheetahs are the large cat of choice for school reports at the library.  So everyone should enjoy this latest offering from the boffo wildlife team of Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop, who tell here the story of the Cheetah Conservation Fund and its leader, Laurie Marker. Marker and her colleagues, with the support of Namibia's government, have helped stave off extinction for the most endangered of the big cats in Africa. So much good information here about the cheetah, the fastest land animal, endangered not only by farmers killing them as predators, though they don't like livestock and rarely eat it, but by their own genetic weaknesses resulting from inbreeding. Montgomery and Bishop share the workings of the CCF, explaining the methods for healing injured and abandoned cheetahs and teaching them to return to the wild. Fascinating information as always from the ever-reliable Montgomery and Bishop.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) by Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick

If there's one book today's kids need to read, it is Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) . The authors provide a fun format for teaching etiquette to children. They discuss proper behavior at home, at school, at other people's homes and in public places. The information is completely up-to-date with cellphone manners and netiquette included. Fun, cartoony illustrations are on practically every page giving the book great visual appeal. This book is perfect for boys and girls in the fourth grade or older. WARNING: Bodily functions are discussed.

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin Illustrated by Leslie Evans Charlesburg; 2009; unpaged Faces of the Moon is a short nonfiction book that describes the different phases of the moon and why the moon appears like it does on certain nights. This book is short and sweet so even the youngest of moon lovers will enjoy it. The layout is simplistic and easy to follow. I don’t know much about the moon so I found it very interesting.

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...