Birds and Beasts

The photography in Walter Chandoha's The Pet Album is beautiful and should be appealing to children. For the most part, the text appears to be well thought out and puts a proper degree of emphasis on the child's responsibility towards a pet. As someone who has had much to do with animals both wild and tame, I did feel that there might have been mention of the fact that the wild animals which the child is being encouraged to feed can bite—hard. One doesn't want to dampen a child's enthusiasm but it should be tempered by a degree of caution.

I also take strong issue with the suggestion that the child "get a male and female rabbit . . . to see how baby rabbits are born." In this day and age when animal shelters are full of unwanted "pets" waiting to be slaughtered, no child or adult should be encouraged to breed any animal just to see the babies born. It is exceedingly selfish and most unfair to the animals to produce unwanted litters just to show one's child the "miracle of birth."

In addition, it was a disappointment to me to find such a careless taxonomic error as box "tortoise." It is unfortunate that a man who takes such lovely photographs cannot take the time to explain the difference between a turtle and a tortoise—and a box turtle is certainly not a tortoise.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the photography very much but felt that the text left something to be desired both in its outlook on "pets" and in its accuracy.

The White Cardinal, though a novel, is a first rate natural history book. It contains a wealth of details about bird life in a readily absorbable form. One who wanted to read the book for the story alone would enjoy it since the scientific facts are a well-integrated part of the story and are not pushed obtrusively at the reader.

The book is very much in the modern trend with its emphasis on preserving the species in the wild—or perhaps our views have simply come full circle, since this is how things were many years ago before "science" took over with its view that nothing could be understood unless it was cut up and sealed in a bottle.

The author seems to have done a thorough job of researching the details of the life histories of cardinals and their co-existing species. I found it all extremely interesting since, not being an ornithologist, many of the facts were new to me. Bancroft's presentation of these facts is excellent; he does not talk down to the reader but simply states things in such an uncomplicated form that they are readily comprehensible. A parent would not have to be ashamed to be caught reading this book for his own information.

Whether intentionally or not, The White Cardinal may also serve as an object lesson in pointing out that there are outcasts in the animal world as well as in the human sphere. It is sometimes difficult for children (and adults) to see the parallels between human and animal realms and this book is an excellent illustration of one of them.

An American Ghost is a fast-moving adventure story, yet one which is similarly full of points to ponder. The author leaves the conflict unresolved at the end. One is not clear about what use the boy intended to make of his newly-gained insights into man's dependency on creatures other than himself. Running through the book is Albie's discovery that the world does not exist solely for the good of man, nor does man have the right to make arbitrary, unthinking decisions about who shall live and who shall die. It is never...