They eat, play, fight, suffer, run, sleep, live, die. In the empathetic world of childhood, animals easily represent heroes or villains, parents or siblings, lords or pawns. Pick up three children's books and you will likely find at least one animal that has, following in the footsteps of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle or Aesop's tortoise and hare, surrendered its species identity for a more civilized existence. The empathetic draw of animals has not escaped authors and publishers of books that attempt to help children learn about nature.
Children go for animal titles.
Consider the scene in Jane Hoeppner's third-grade class when I dropped by with a box of 17 recent books sent by American Scientist . I was surprised. It appears empathy can be taxon-specific. Susan Bonners portrays an early winter hunt in which a female lynx and her growing kittens fan out and take zigzag paths about 30 paces apart to capture a snowshoe here. I am intrigued by how nature can be translated to children and how much we can know about other species.