Skydiver: Saving the Fastest Bird in the World by Celia Godkin (review)

Godkin follows a mating pair of peregrine falcons as they court and tend their nest of eggs. The expected trajectory of this picture-book idyll is startlingly broken by a woman who rappels down the cliff wall, scoops the eggs away, and takes off. The birds make another attempt at brooding for the season, and although two eggs are shattered, one chick hatches. The present-tense story is unclear in both tone and premise until it shifts to background on the discovery of how DDT, concentrated in the food chain, was rendering falcon eggs too fragile to survive nesting. The cliffside thief is actually one of the good guys in this narrative, and the focus now becomes scientific strategies to encourage a second seasonal mating to maximize egg production, and to raise hatchlings in an environment free from human contact. The story itself will engross bird lovers and nascent environmentalists, but the quirky careening of tenses and settings, along with the lack of reference to time period, is likely to cause confusion. Colors in the art are unfortunately muddy and figures stiff throughout, dimming the implied glamor and speed of this fleetest of birds. A brief note suggests four sources for further research and alerts readers to the need for continued vigilance on current pesticides.