Birds from Head to Tail (Head to Tail)

Like the three previous books in this series, Dinosaurs from Head to Tail, Ocean Animals From Head to Tail and Bugs from Head to Tail, Birds from Head to Tail utilizes a question and answer format to introduce its audience to, in this case, eight birds (great horned owl, hummingbird, bald eagle, kiwi, arctic tern, flamingo, blue-footed booby and peacock). With each bird, Stacey Roderick’s text asks a question based on the portion of a bird that has been illustrated by Kwanchai Moriya. As the book’s title indicates, the bird parts begin with a bird’s head (an owl) and conclude with a tail (a peacock). In between, the visual clues include a beak, eye, body, wings, legs and feet.

Each bird is treated over a pair of spreads with the first spread supplying the question and the visual clue. The second spread illustrates the bird in its entirety and places the bird in one of its typical habitats. Roderick’s text [see example above in excerpt] provides informative and entertaining information about the focal bird. When a term, such as “mating season”, might not be readily understood by the book’s intended audience, it is immediately explained within brackets.

In addition to the book’s eight principal birds, the author/illustrator team briefly introduce another eight birds in the book’s closing two pages via a section called “Other Awesome Birds”. They are: turkey vulture, parrot, ostrich, penguin, albatross, ruffed grouse, blue jay and woodpecker. In addition to a small Moriya illustration, Roderick supplies a sentence of text which offers an interesting tidbit of information. For example, “A ruffed grouse’s leg feathers help keep it warm in winter” while “An ostrich’s eyeball is bigger than its brain.”

According to information on the copyright page, “The artwork in this book was created in Adobe Photoshop and illustrator, using original photographs and textures.” Kwanchai Moriya’s resulting artwork has a very collage-like appearance to it.

Previous books in the “Head to Tail” series have been engaging, informative and just plain fun to read. Birds from Head to Tail, with its combination of familiar and lesser known birds, is completely consistent with the series’ fine quality.