Discover a nonfiction bird book that unexpectedly reads like a birder’s own illustrated nature journal. In this book, Matt Sewell documents over 45 unique owls ranging from the African Wood Owl to the Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl.
Each owl receives its own one-page description, which includes items such as an owl’s song, call, common name, coloring, size, scientific name, feather placement, eye color and nesting habits, along with Sewell’s personal reflections. Accompanying each owl description is a one-page image completed using watercolor paints.
Art enthusiasts and visual learners will be drawn in by each illustration, looking again and again at the multiple beak styles, eye colors, ears (or earless), feather colors and wing sizes. One soon discovers the illustrations are done by the author, who is also an artist.
Bird enthusiasts and those interested in ornithology will appreciate the inclusion of scientific names and how the categories are divided by areas on Earth where owls inhabit—woodlands, tropics, wilderness and desert.
Teri Bennis is a librarian at the R.H. Stafford library in Woodbury. Find more to read at washcolib.org.
