This is my favorite pop-up book. My copy did not work and I fell in love with the setup of the book without sound, the whole idea is excellent. The pop-up scenes loaded with birds and the birds collected in the scenes are divided by type of ecologic area.
I am afraid these two videos below do not do the book justice. I almost made another one. They leave out what makes this book so impressive.
What these two videos do not show is the flap on each page contains a map of the birds, a photo of each bird that has been recorded. The individual bird photos overlap as the individual bird calls overlap. It sounds like a cacophony when each page is opened, the sound is actually a string of bird voices overlapping. You hear one bird clearly then another picks up while the first is still calling. The first call drops, there is only the second bird, briefly, then a third bird picks up and so on until all dozen or so birds on the page sing. The map shows by bird photos how the bird songs overlap and then what to look for within the pop up. Until you can identify who in the pop-up is calling. The pop-ups arranged by ecology, the recorded songs carefully sorted and arranged, the birds photos mapped to their calls, it is all very clever and exceedingly carefully well done.
The sound did not work on my copy. What a bummer.
I enjoyed the book anyway mightily impressed with each scene. I looked for the scenes that seemed to fit Colorado. Tundra sort of matched what I see here and so does the grasslands page, the worst page of all pages with only eight birds to match and not much to pop up, hardly any vegetation, mainly a fence, but it has a nest! With eggs! The other pages have up to a dozen birds. In the back of the book there are more words using forest ranger language explaining the characteristics of each ecological region. So it's all very educational and scientific with its bird-knowledge ornithology, it's geology, biology and ecology and its sound recordings and playback, so much that its science almost overtakes its art, but its science does not overtake its art, it contributes for a delicious double layer art/science educational entertaining book-cake that can be owned and eaten too.
* Sonoran Desert
* Pacific seabird colony
* Eastern deciduous forest
* Arctic tundra
* Cypress swamp
* Grasslands
* Pacific rainforest
No fair, Pacific gets two pages. But that's okay, Colorado got two pages too. Maybe even three with Sonoran Desert.
Then I bought 3 triple A batteries and changed them out with the batteries in the back of the book and BAM the whole book came alive with sound, a bit noisy actually, as you hear in these YouTube uploads, and I am in LOVE with this book for it being so outrageous. It is not so easy to sort the bird calls, they go quickly with no pauses, like I mentioned the calls overlap and some sound a bit similar, but it is excellent training.
It is the sort of book a person can become completely wrapped up in. Especially a child, I think. You know how children get with their "Read me the Big Mouth Frog, Daddy" over and over again. They'd have all these sounds memorized and be able to ID the birds based on their calls. They'd have fun matching photo to sound to bird in the pop-up.
Know what sound I did not hear and bird I did not see? Here's a hint.
HmmmmMMMMMMMMmmmmmm
I'll be buying this book for my younger brother's boys. I can see them pouring over it, all its details the way my older brother and I poured over a book about airplanes that identifies military aircraft by profile and by silhouette. That book did not pop up.
The demonstrator, so careful with gloves, races though turning pages before the calls finish. There is no time to take in anything, far less all of it in. The camera does not go bird to bird to bird to bird as they are calling. It doesn't even mention the map nor the information in back. It's all there but the demonstrator does not show it. Probably because they do not know it. All they show is a pop-up with sounds. It happens. You do get people with no appreciation for the treasure at hand. This is a terrible sales job. Look at the key frame showing, the swamp, you know the swamp to be water-level flat, yet the pond surface is stacked toward the back in layers. All that is pulled upward and backward by a large flat V upright mechanism with Cyprus trees photographed as background. It also drags upward with it a few forward trees that perform as theatrical scrim. Most of the scenes follow this basic construction.
This video is even shorter, but it does get in closer.
I am cross with these two people for giving this amazing book such short shrift. The book is much better than they are showing it. The book is not to be raced through like this. Now you get right back there and start over and this time show what the book is giving us. Show us why this is an important book.
How else can you justify $5.78 a page?
Lowest price presently, $36.44 (used) + $3.99 shipping = $40.43 / 7 pages = 5.775
Get back there and give us $5.78 a page worth. It's there when one appreciates what this book is doing. The book is showing who it is making all that racket out there. If nothing else the book shows what to aim for.
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