Geslacht: female
Nationaliteit: New Zealand
Woonplaatsen: Otago Peninsula, Dunedin, New Zealand
Beroepen: writer
documentary filmmaker
researcher
radio host
biologist
Korte biografie: Alison Ballance is a biologist turned film-maker, who has worked for the Dunedin-based television production company NHNZ [Natural History New Zealand] since 1990. She began as a researcher, and has gone on to produce, direct and write more than a dozen wildlife documentaries that have been broadcast around the world.

She is the author of more than twenty books including Hoki: The Story of a Kakapo with Gideon Climo, Island Magic: Wildlife of the South Seas with Rod Morris, and several collections of natural history books for young readers. She lives on the Otago Peninsula.
(From Longacre Press website)

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Dancing with Cranes door Alison Ballance

Very good book, highlighting 3 different shoots - the Mongolian steppe region, birds in a New Zealand island and tigers in Russia. Although I knew tigers were from Asia, I didn't think of them as living in Russia or Thailand. Good to have the pictures, as noted by another, I wish there were more, even the black and white ones, because that helped to illustrate what the region looks like. Quite interesting to learn the underpinnings of making wildlife films.

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nancynova | 1 andere bespreking | Oct 25, 2017 |

New Zealand's great white sharks : how science is… door Alison Ballance

Alison Ballance, New Zealand scientist and science reporter for Radio New Zealand, is the ideal person to write this book about the latest research on New Zealand's Great White Sharks. The book is based on the New Zealand great white shark project, which began in 2005 and was inspired by ground-breaking work by Australian and United States scientists, who had started electronically tagging the species in 1999. With topics such as: How Old is that Shark?, On the Menu, Built for the Kill, How Sharks Navigate, Shark Sex and Baby Sharks, this book is packed full of interesting information, ideal for school projects. Accompanying the wealth of information are many, many photos and diagrams and the book is completed with a very detailed index and a glossary.
Although the intended audience is intermediate and young adults, the quality and local nature of the information means this book would not be out of place in the adult nonfiction. However this book will also appeal to younger children who love looking at pictures of sharks..… (meer)

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RefPenny | May 1, 2017 |

South Sea Islands: A Natural History door Rod Morris

slightly boring but many interesting details about islands and gondwana and the menace of rabbits and rats and cats.

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mahallett | Jul 15, 2013 |

Dancing with Cranes door Alison Ballance

I have to confess that I did not actually finish this book. I read most of it but skipped the last section on the tigers. I was a little disappointed that the adventures of this filmmaker were not more riveting. I guess we could paraphrase that old quote that says "writing about music is like dancing about art," because writing about filmmaking may have the same problem. I kept wanting to SEE what they were doing, not read about it. There are a few photos in the book but not enough to satisfy my curiosity.

And the life of the wildlife film producer seems a bit tedious for all the attendant excitement. Alison Ballance spends a lot of time telling about vehicular breakdowns, long drives, and animals not cooperating in the filming efforts. It began to be a bit redundant.

One more problem I had with this book is that, not being a native New Zealander, I didn't always understand the language. There were times when she used slang or referred to trees/animals that are not familiar to me, but she mentioned them as if everyone ought to know what they were.

I did like hearing about her visits to Mongolia and the kakapo islands (enjoyed the latter more) but it just felt as if there were something missing. Perhaps a better writer could have made it come alive for me, or perhaps I just need to watch the documentary films they made...… (meer)

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glade1 | 1 andere bespreking | May 13, 2013 |

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