The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island (Wild By Nature)

Written by Deborah Hodge

Illustrated by Karen Reczuch

Groundwood Books

978-1-773067186 

32 pp. 

Ages 3–7 

August 2025 

 

Children's non-fiction books generally take two formats: one as a story, and the other as an information book with graphs, maps, info boxes, a glossary and more. Both formats work but some stories work better one way than the another. For the Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island, Deborah Hodge and Karen Reczuch's chose to tell their story as a narrative, taking readers right onto the island and making them witness to the lives of these seabirds. 

From The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island, written by Deborah Hodge, illustrated by Karen Reczuch

First, Deborah Hodge transports us to Triangle Island, an isolated island off the northwestern tip of Vancouver Island. This Ecological Reserve is protected, as is the Marine Wildlife Area around it, offering safety for millions of seabirds from people and land predators. Each year, more than 50,000 Tufted Puffins return in the spring and, after finding their mates, prepare burrows in which nests are created.

From The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island, written by Deborah Hodge, illustrated by Karen Reczuch

In addition to recounting the life cycle from the laying of the egg to it hatching six weeks later, Deborah Hodge discusses the food and feeding of the Tufted Puffins, the fledging of the birds, and their end-of-summer departure to the North Pacific. It's not until the birds are mature that they will return to Triangle Island to start new lives with the laying of eggs.

From The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island, written by Deborah Hodge, illustrated by Karen Reczuch

While Deborah Hodge does append her story with a graphic list of other seabirds of Triangle Island and extensive information about the island itself—an extraordinary place of seabird diversity and national and provincial protection—including further reading, she stays true to a narrative. From their arrival to their breeding, departure and return, the lives of the Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island are told with simplicity but heart. It is evident that Deborah Hodge has a deep appreciation for this place and its wildlife and the need to protect them all.

From The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island, written by Deborah Hodge, illustrated by Karen Reczuch

The remarkable beauty of Triangle Island and its uncommon accommodation of seabirds, among which the Tufted Puffins are but one species, is gloriously portrayed in Karen Reczuch's watercolour and coloured pencil illustrations. The scientific accuracy is there but it's Karen Reczuch's style of creating textures in the birds, in the landscape and with her perspective that generates an elegance of graphic storytelling.  

 

Karen Reczuch and Deborah Hodge have collaborated on previous picture books in their West Coast Wild series (e.g., West Coast Wild Rainforest and West Coast Wild ABC) and, as in The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island, they have always given us reality with feeling. Even as they tell us about plants and animals and Canadian landscapes, they make us feel for the places they portray. I anticipate no less for this new series Wild By Nature if The Tufted Puffins of Triangle Island is any indication.

Burt the Beetle Lives Here!

Written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

Kids Can Press

978-1-5256-1011-9

64 pp.

Ages 5-8

June 2023

Author-illustrator Ashley Spires introduced her readers to Burt the ten-lined June beetle (also known as a watermelon beetle) in Burt the Beetle Doesn't Bite! (Kids Can Press, 2021) and charmed us with his story as well as educating us on the natural habits of a variety of other insects. This time, Ashley Spires takes us into insect real estate to look at the nests and habitats of Burt and his insect friends as they seek shelter for short stints and longer periods.

From Burt the Beetle Lives Here! by Ashley Spires

Burt likes to spend short periods of time "snug as a bug" under a leaf. But when he realizes that it would be nice to have a place to call home, he looks at the homes of other insects. He considers the chrysalis of the monarch butterfly, the foam of the spittlebugs, and the silk web nests of tent caterpillars, but each doesn't work for him. So, he considers what materials he might use to build his own, taking his cues from wasps, bees, and weaver ants. Again, none work for him. 

Though he's ready to give up on finding a home within sight of his beloved porch light, Burt realizes soon enough that he needs shelter from weather and predators, and finds that protection, and even camaraderie, in a most familiar location. 

From Burt the Beetle Lives Here! by Ashley Spires

Kids love learning about science and living things, but it must be taught in a way that entertains through the inquiry process. As in all her Burt books, Ashley Spires has given young students, and their teachers, an easy source of relevant scientific information, here about insects and their habitats using Burt as an insightful guide. Through his very small eyes, readers are shown a bug's-eye view of a variety of different insect nests, with explanations for how the animals live in them or create them. And with her trademark humour, Ashley Spires will make kids chuckle at Burt's antics, as the adults in their lives will laugh at the analogies to human home-buying with places with stunning views, lots of potential, open floor plans and advertised as architectural masterpieces and those that are perfect for entertaining or impeccably renovated.

From Burt the Beetle Lives Here! by Ashley Spires

Ashley Spires, creator of Binky the Space Cat, consistently uses a clean illustrative style that is digitally rendered, never cluttering her illustrations with superfluous details that, while accurate, may detract from the key information about where the insects live and why. Because of the organic nature of the story, Ashley Spires's palette is primarily one of greens and browns, but she gives us enough shades and tints and tones to make it appear rich and varied, much like nature itself.

Whether you're a teacher of younger students who need to understand local habitats or how communities create nests, or you're a school librarian who loves providing quality creative non-fiction for the many children who prefer non-fiction or fiction, or a reader to appreciates fabulously illustrated books with a side helping of humour, Burt the Beetle Lives Here! has got you covered, perhaps even better than Burt's leaf!

 

🐛 🐞 🐜 🐝 🐛 🐞 🐜 🐝 🐛

 

Burt the Beetle Doesn't Bite! (2021)

Burt the Beetle Lives Here! (2023)

The Wolves Return: A New Beginning for Yellowstone National Park

Written and illustrated by Celia Godkin

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-011-6

32 pp.

Ages 6-9

March 2017

I know a science teacher whose go-to book to introduce interrelationships of living things and the balance of natural ecosystems is Celia Godkin’s award-winning book Wolf Island (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1989/2006).  I encourage a new generation of science teachers to look to her new book The Wolves Return to demonstrate those same concepts as they relate to the wolves of Yellowstone National Park and spark a new appreciation for the natural world with an aim to stewardship and not manipulation.

Canadian gray wolves once roamed much of North America before they became an inconvenience to settlers’ livestock and were hunted relentlessly until they became listed as a threatened species in much of the US.  To help revitalize affected ecosystems, twenty-three gray wolves captured in Canada were released in Yellowstone between 1995 and 1996.  The Wolves Return documents in prose and detailed illustrations the impacts of the Yellowstone Wolf Project on the local habitats and wildlife, celebrating the success of reintroducing the wolves here.

But the way Celia Godkin tells the story is not to just lay out that bare facts as many unseasoned writers might but instead to provide visual commentary, in words and pictures, of what would have been happening.

From The Wolves Return 

by Celia Godkin

The Wolves Return begins with a lone wolf’s howl, later joined by those of the pack, sounds previously unknown to a herd of elk grazing in the river valley.

On a moonlit night, a howl rings out across the river valley.  The elk prick their ears.  They have not heard this sound before, yet they are afraid.

Weeks later, the elk, now aware of this threat, have moved themselves to the higher, wooded slopes where trees provide some protection from direct attacks by the wolves. Consequently, seedlings once eaten by the elk are allowed to flourish and grow into aspen trees in the river valley. With the trees come the beavers who build dams and lodges creating ponds that invite more wildlife like muskrats, birds, insects, and an abundance of species, plant and animal, creating a new ecosystem.  Celia Godkin illustrates the complex and sophisticated food webs–not just food chains–and evolving landscape of habitats but punctuates the story with the science of the return of the wolves in her appendices.

From The Wolves Return 

by Celia Godkin

The scientist in Celia Godkin–she has a Master’s degree in zoology–comes through in the precision of her illustrations but her coloured pencil and watercolour fine art is more expressive than just a record of the living ecosystem.  She gives life to the organisms and places within The Wolves Return, though I know that young readers will be amazed by her detailed and accurate depictions of the animals.

Just like Wolf Island, The Wolves Return should become a teacher’s primary picture book for introducing discussions about habitats and communities, the diversity of living things and interactions with ecosystems.  With The Wolves Return, Celia Godkin is able to inform,  fascinate and initiate dialogue about the world we impact in both negative and positive ways and how it can gloriously amend itself sometimes with just a tiny bit of help.

From The Wolves Return 

by Celia Godkin