What’s Inside a Bird’s Nest?: And Other Questions About Nature & Life Cycles
by Rachel Ignotofsky; illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary    Crown    48 pp.
3/24    9780593176528    $19.99
Library ed.  9780593176566    $22.99
e-book ed.  9780593176559    $11.99

In an assortment of nest homes, baby birds happily await the breakfasts brought by their parents. These basic needs will be familiar to humans, too, providing a welcoming introduction to birds and an invitation to learn more about them. In the pages that follow, Ignotofsky interweaves generalized information about bird life cycles (using the Eastern Bluebird as exemplar) with explanations of bird anatomy and behaviors. Questions placed throughout the text (“What’s inside an egg?” “How does a bird know where to go each year?”) drive the narrative forward across topics such as nest building, learning to fly, and bird diets. The cheerful illustrations (“created traditionally and using a computer”) of cartoonlike birds are the highlight of the book: packed with movement, color, and humor, they sometimes fully cover one or more pages and sometimes divide into smaller panels to explore variations across species or lists, such as the steps readers can take to preserve bird-friendly spaces in their neighborhoods. A short “sources and resources” list is appended.

Pubissue-From the March/April 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.