Of Books and Boys and Other Stuff » who-eats-what adventure

Nudibranchs and Blog Reviews

W.H. Beck — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:44:28 +0000

First, the blog reviews: we’ve gotten some nice ones about our Follow That Food Chain series lately, and I realized I’ve neglected to compile them here.

SimplyScience blogged about our temperate forest book, saying, “Interactive and entertaining, A Temperate Food Chain provides a fun-filled trek though the forest habitat as it shows specific examples of energy flow.”

A Patchwork of Books read our savanna book and says, “The really cool thing about these books is how the reader gets to control the story, much like those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books we all love so much. You can choose what a particular animal eats next, leading to a new page filled with cool facts and brilliant photographs.”

Practically Paradise writes, “With 64 pages and ample end material, these are useful to my middle schoolers but are written at a fourth grade level intended for grades 3-5. These unusual titles demand reader interaction as you pick which tertiary consumer you will follow through the pages. (Think Choose Your Own Adventure for the food chain).”

And most recently, SimplyScience profiled our coral reef book, “This particular book is especially good because it includes so many invertebrates and other varied species that are not well-known to children within the complex ecosystem of a coral reef. Animals such as fan worms, corals, sawfish, parrotfish, moray eels, nudibranchs, and sea urchins are among the consumers, with the producers and well-explained phytoplankton included in the chain information.” She also includes two fun activities to do with our books:

“Activity 1

Create your own food chain by following one of your choosing from the book. Make a diagram to show the energy flow.

Activity 2

Look through the book and find the invertebrates. Choose one invertebrate and look it up. Find out in which group it is classified according to the phylum, class, or order. Then find other animals in each group.”

And finally, the nudibranchs. I’ll admit it, seeing the mention of the nudibranchs made me smile. We’ve had many an immature, silly joke around our house about nudibranchs since writing that book. (For the record, it’s pronounced “noo-di-braank” and they’re also known as “sea slugs”…which is kinda funny in its own right.) Just don’t get us started on African wild asses…

(picture from laszlo-photo on Flickr’s Creative Commons)

Black Bears in the News (and in Aisle 5)

W.H. Beck — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:39 +0000

The very first animal I wrote about in the Follow That Food Chain series was a black bear. She and her cubs were in the proposal that ended up selling and becoming our habitat series. So I have a special fondness for them. And living in northern Wisconsin, you see black bears. Sometimes in the woods, maybe in your yard, but…in the grocery store?

That’s right, last week a black bear wandered into the Marketplace in Hayward–a place we’ve shopped many a time while at the cabin. He lingered in the liquor section. Here’s the clip.

Of course, the joke around here is that this was the Hamm’s beer bear. Does anyone remember this guy? Or was this just a local commercial?

And now I’ve got that song stuck in my head…

WARNING: Cute Baby Animal Video

W.H. Beck — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:48:48 +0000

In our Follow That Food Chain: a Mangove Forest book, we wrote about clouded leopards. They are so secretive that not much is known about them. They are also very much in danger of going extinct before we can even learn about them. But now two clouded leopard babies have been born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. (And two more at the Nashville Zoo.) While these leopards won’t get to grow up in the wild tangles of the mangrove forest of Souteast Asia, they may help us understand their species better.

(I dare you to watch and not go, “Awwww…”)

Guess Who?

W.H. Beck — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:05:18 +0000

Do you know what these are?

Colonel Mustard came across them on the shore of our lake right in front of our cabin. He thought they might be bones. They’re not. There were about 50 or so, scattered and curled around a shallow hole scooped out of the shore.

That’s right; turtle eggs! At first, we were afraid something (a raccoon?; hopefully not our dogs) had dug up the nest in the night and feasted on them. The shells were pretty scattered around on shore. But later, we were poking around the water’s edge near the nest and we found this guy.

So at least one survived. (Don’t worry, after a short stay in our critter keeper, we sent him back out into the world.)

So what have you found on a walk lately that stumped you at first?

Fish Heads, Fish Heads, Rolly Polly Fish Heads

W.H. Beck — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:34:58 +0000

Colonel Mustard and I went for a canoe paddle around our bay. We landed on a sandbar to hike around. Aside from crunchy, empty snail shells, gobs of goose poop, and murky puddles full of jelly globs of eggs and squirming wrigglers, we came across lots and lots of…fish bits.

What do you think picked these fish apart? We searched around for clues. We think we’ve solved the puzzle. What’s your guess?