A Good Read

We sure enjoy a good read aloud book around here, so when I saw The Nature Club book series on Facebook, I searched it out right away. Nature, kids, books, all rolled into one. I ordered the first book in the series called Taking Flight. We are about one-third of the way through it right now, and we are loving it. Ella says “I love the bird banding, and how Izzy is making new friends.” Ella has been inspired to band birds someday, too. And Eli says “I like when Izzy met Tai. And I like how we get to learn about the birds.” The author, Rachel Mazur, not only takes us on soon to be fifth grader Izzy’s journey but a corresponding journey with a family of fledgling warblers. So we get to do a built in nature study while we read!

These aren’t Rachel Mazur’s first books. She has authored both a picture book called If You Were a Bear and a non-fiction book, Speaking of Bears. Her knowledge of wildlife and nature can be attributed to her educational background and career experiences as well as her genuine love for the outdoors and everything that lives there. Her resumé includes jobs as both a naturalist and wildlife biologist, and Rachel currently lives in California where she is chief of wildlife at Yosemite National Park. As a mom of nine year old twins, she knows exactly what middle grade kids appreciate in a book, and she targets that age as her main audience. She hopes that teaching kids about wildlife will, in turn, inspire them to take simple actions to protect it.

The Nature Club series in Rachel’s words “is a nature-based series of five books. Each book features one kid in the club and tells the story of how they face a challenge of growing up in parallel with the story of an animal and how it faces a challenge. At the end of each book, the kids find simple ways to take action to help themselves and the wildlife they love. Through reading these books, kids learn all about bird migration and bird banding, monarch butterflies and their relationship with milkweeds, bears and raccoons and the importance of keeping them wild, frogs and metamorphosis, and raccoons and the interconnections of life.”