Coyote Moon by Maria Gianferrari (review)

We see a lot of titles about wild animals in the, well, wild, but what about those who live among us? Coyote Moon follows the adult of a small coyote family in the ’burbs as she hunts geese on the golf course, chases a rabbit underneath a playground slide, and finally finds her family’s dinner in a wild turkey at the suburban pond. The prose is delicate (“Coyote threads through rusty reeds”) but factual, and the contrast of domestic setting and very undomesticated animal is arresting. Ibatoulline’s art displays his usual amazing precision in textures such as fur and bark, and it turns the moody tones of the coyote’s nocturnal adventure into great drama, with startling prey’s-eye-view images of the critter in full hunt. Backyard nature has rarely been this exciting; kids who would roll their eyes at tree identification will sit intrigued for this. A spread of coyote facts, including websites and books for further reading, helpfully rounds out the volume.