Tales of Famous Animals
This book chronicles famous animals across all sizes, species, geographic regions, and time periods, from the battlefields of ancient Rome to New York City on September 11. Some are household names—Seabiscuit, Jumbo, Punxsutawney Phil—while others are more obscure, like Old Abe, the pet eagle kept by Civil War soldiers, or Balto, the sled dog that delivered life-saving diphtheria medicine to the children of Nome, Alaska, in the winter of 1925. To further drive home the dual points that humans and animals forge unbreakable bonds and that humans are often dependent on their animal allies, the Roops include both humorous and poignant fables, too. Each tale is told in  high-interest narrative format, along with Pullen’s old-fashioned oil-painting illustrations. Primary source materials drawn from museums and historical societies are used in many of the stories, and each is carefully annotated in the bibliography. Teachers will find plenty of cross-curricular use for this in almost any upper-elementary or middle-school classroom. Grades 4-8. --Erin Anderson