Dragon In The Sky (Junior Library Guild)
Gr 2-5-Like An Extraordinary Life: The Story of a Monarch Butterfly (Orchard, 1997), this book is carefully researched and extraordinarily detailed in text and art. Readers follow one particular green darner, Anax, from his birth in a swamp in New York to mating and death in a Florida pond. Specific incidents in his life are augmented with more general information about dragonflies and damselflies. Sidebars give facts about other creatures that share his habitats. Information on raising dragonfly nymphs for study is appended, and several Web sites are suggested. In Marstall's watercolor-and-oil paintings, soft greens and browns predominate. This is an exemplary nature-study book-accurate, explicit, and satisfyingly complete.Ellen Heath, Orchard School, Ridgewood, NJCopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.