Mike Spinak

Whoa. Natasha would have lost her mind over this a few years ago. Most kids picture books are neither so detailed in text, nor so well illustrated. They tend to rely on broad information and stock photos and a child can go through a huge number of, say, bat books, without picking up many specifics at all. Spinak shows two young hummingbirds, thirteen and fifteen days-old, and follows them until both have left the nest, in just over a week. Day by day you can see their feathers coming in, their beaks lengthening and straightening, and their mother getting tired of it all. The close up photography is amazing.

I think both kids and parents would enjoy this enormously, even on multiple readings.

Download provided by author for review.
… (meer)

Wow! I'm jealous. I love to take photos of hummingbirds & have some pretty good ones, but nothing of this quality nor of them growing in the nest. Fantastic. Also, it is about an Anna's hummingbird & all we have around here are Ruby Throats.

The book is aimed at kids, but is fine for adults, too. The language is perfect for kids, clear & concise without being stupid, & the detail is amazing. We follow two hummingbird chicks from 2 weeks old to when they fly off the nest a week later. Their growth in this week is amazing & some of the pictures are marked up to point out details. I skimmed through it the first time in 10 minutes & have since gone back through it a couple more times. It would make a fantastic picture book, but I'd really like to see it in large format. It would be worth the extra cost.

If I have any complaint, it is that I'd like to have seen a couple of pictures of them before they were 2 weeks old, but maybe those weren't very nice to look at or even possible, judging by the camera angle - a minor detail.

I was given this book free for posting a review. I'm not sure what other formats it is available in, but I got mine as either a hi-res or low-res Adobe PDF. I read both & suggest the low-res option. The 43mb high res doesn't display any better than the 5mb low-res file & is somewhat slower, depending on your computer & connection speed. Most of us don't have displays or printers that will gain anything by going hi-res, either.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.… (meer)