Feathers

By Melissa Stewart

Young naturalists meet sixteen birds in this elegant introduction to the many uses of feathers. A concise main text highlights how feathers are not just for flying. More curious readers are invited to explore informative sidebars, which underscore specific ways each bird uses its feathers for a variety of practical purposes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlesbridge
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781607346272

Melissa Stewart

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 100 nonfiction books for children. Her lifelong fascination with the natural world led her to earn a B.S. in biology and M.A. in science journalism. When Melissa isn't writing or speaking to children or educators, she's usually exploring the fields, forests, and wetlands near her home in Massachusetts.

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Reviews for Feathers

[Anand Arora · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book for kids to learn about feathers! A must read for bird exploration.

[gakers16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book, Feathers Not Just for Flying by Melissa Stewart, is an informational text about birds and the importance of the feathers. The book shows the readers many different birds and explains the different kinds of feathers birds have and the uses for each. It is a great resource for learning about birds in general or diving deeper into the significance and uses of feathers. I love this book because it integrates birds from all over the world and gives readers useful tools for discovering the importance of feathers to birds. This would be a great book for talking about animal habitats and adaptations. I would read it to my students as an introduction to the variety of birds in our world. Then, I would use each page (each different bird focused on in the book) as a way to study and learn about that specific bird and its habitat. I would also tie in some art projects into this as students could replicate the feathers they read about or design a bird themselves or use feathers to create artwork. You could even integrate geography while studying the birds from the book (as each picture of the bird is labeled with the location of the picture) and bring in knowledge of that place in order to better understand the birds living there.

[lesliemuir · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Feathers is all about the kinds of feathers found on birds and what birds use them for. This book is technically a picture book, illustrated in colored pencil as if someone were trying to get photo realism of what feathers look like on a page and upclose. The book is full of technical information about feathers and tries to answer questions that explore how strong they are, what animals use them for and how they help birds in all different ways. Some of the pictures are designed to look as if someone had tacked in several different specimens on to a page of the book as if it were a real nature journal. I think that's a really cool concept for a science book because it makes it look more like an authentic inquiry into the subject by a young person instead of a collection of dry facts.

[athena.j · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The genre of this book is informational. It describes all sorts of functions for feathers; warmth, a cushion, shade, protection, camouflage, attraction, floatation, and many more. In addition to the functions, each page has a different type of bird on it, so that students can see the functions of feathers in context according to what bird uses that function with their feathers. This book would be appropriate for use in a 3rd grade classroom.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great information, wonderful illustrations, and appealing design.

[bookwren · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

From endpapers illustrated with soft sepia feathers to content diversified with simple large print sentences and smaller, more detailed comparisons to variously framed art to final glossary and author's note, this book is a labor of love, designed for people of all ages. The opening sentence sets a tone of fine literary nonfiction with facts couched in lyrical language: "Birds and feathers go together, like trees and leaves, like stars and the sky. All birds have feathers, but no other animals do." This two-page spread also foreshadows the individual species to come and their size differences with a row of feathers: from the large peacock to the small dark-eyed junco. Stewart explains her title succinctly in the second paragraph: "Most birds have thousands of feathers, but those feathers aren't all the same. That's because feathers have so many different jobs to do." Readers learn many facts about feathers, always in comparison to common objects. One of my favorites is the page on the willow ptarmigan, whose feathers allow them to “sprint across the snow like snowshoes.” The sidebar fact - nestled in an artful snowflake frame – informs readers that these northern birds “grow a thick layer of feathers on top of their toes.” Brannen further clarifies this fact with two drawings: a trio of the densely-feather-footed birds and a line of human snowshoe tracks.Few books for children give such attention to the details of scientific observation and note-taking, rarely providing captions for the names of birds. Stewart provides this and more, including the exact place the illustration and information was taken, often from her own observations. For example: "Red-tailed Hawk, Shiprock, New Mexico". Indirectly, readers learn about the birds' specific habitats from Brannen's illustrations.The “Kinds of Feathers” glossary promotes a philosophy of continual learning by sharing that scientists are discovering new facts every day. Stewart and Brannen show us one way that scientists classify feathers, from tiny, sensory filoplumes to large flight feathers that give birds lift and maneuverability.I was fascinated by the author's note on how she came to write this book. The idea came from an article she read while doing research for another book. Primary sources for this book included library materials, the Internet and her own nature observations. She also interviewed scientists. Stewart then spent three years writing and rewriting the text, always asking herself how she could make it more engaging. When she finally “latched on to the idea of comparing feathers to common objects in our lives” she knew she'd found her unique theme. In many ways, writing picture books is more difficult than writing longer books because so much information must be condensed into clear, engaging sentences.Feathers: Not Just for Flying flies high in the field of literary nonfiction for children – and adults. Educators will find it an ideal source for units on nonfiction (including text features), nature, and birds. The diversified text allows it to be used for beginning and more advanced primary readers. The warm illustrations are pleasing to the eye and informative. The layout is engaging and easy to follow, and may inspire students to create similar information posters for the birds (or other animals or plants) in their own backyards. Kudos to Stewart, Brannen and Charlesbridge for a masterful collaboration.