Do you know what an osprey is? They’re birds of prey, like eagles, only a little smaller. (Ospreys hunt in our Follow That Food Chain: A Temperate Forest book.) When the pesticide DDT almost wiped out the bald eagles, it also devasted the osprey population. They’ve been endangered in Wisconsin–but no more! Their numbers have grown [...]

First, the blog reviews: we’ve gotten some nice ones about our Follow That Food Chain series lately, and I realized I’ve neglected to compile them here.
SimplyScience blogged about our temperate forest book, saying, “Interactive and entertaining, A Temperate Food Chain provides a fun-filled trek though the forest habitat as it shows specific examples of energy [...]

Husband and I were talking about this with friends this weekend. Do you have a a place online that you frequent regularly–but that would surprise everyone to know about? (And no, I’m not talking about THOSE kind of websites. I’m a children’s librarian, for heaven’s sake! Please don’t spoil my innocence.)
My website confession was this one: [...]

The very first animal I wrote about in the Follow That Food Chain series was a black bear. She and her cubs were in the proposal that ended up selling and becoming our habitat series. So I have a special fondness for them. And living in northern Wisconsin, you see black bears. Sometimes in the [...]

My mom’s a genius. (Most moms are—it just takes a while for us to realize it). Look what she made my kids for the lake.

Mr. E and the Critter Keeper
We’re calling it a “critter keeper.”
Some background: our cabin is very much a “cabin” and not a “cottage”. In other words, there’s no carpet, cutesy northwoods [...]

Colonel Mustard and I went for a canoe paddle around our bay. We landed on a sandbar to hike around. Aside from crunchy, empty snail shells, gobs of goose poop, and murky puddles full of jelly globs of eggs and squirming wrigglers, we came across lots and lots of…fish bits.

What do you think picked these [...]