An exciting addition to the narrative non-fiction series Nature Storybooks, about an Eastern Quoll.
The blue-black sky is painted with glistening stars. Quoll has woken. It's playtime here in the moonlit night.
Join a female Eastern quoll and her playful pups as they venture through the forest and fields on their nightly hunt for food.---from the publisher
32 pages 978-1760655679 Ages 5-8
Keywords: quoll, mammals, Australia, narrative non-fiction, animals, 5 year old, 6 year old, 7 year old, 8 year old, zoology
Editor's note: I added this to abookandahug.com to introduce some of us to an animal we may not have heard of before. Turns out the animals in our own area are different from other parts of the Earth. Have fun meeting the quoll. - Barb
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As the sounds of night falling begin to resonate across the darkening landscape, lulling day-dwellers to sleep and telling night-dwellers it is their time to shine, the symphony of croaking, creaking, chirping and scratching is interrupted by a shrill squeal and cough. For emerging from its daytime shelter comes Quoll - ready to play but more importantly, ready to feed for it is hungry and there are mouths to feed back in the burrow.
Now found only in Tasmania because it has been driven to extinction on the mainland (although there are small translocated populations in NSW and the ACT) , the Eastern Quoll is the focus of this new addition to the outstanding Nature Storybook series. Combining lyrical text which personalises the marsupial, with factual information and accompanied by stunning, lifelike illustrations, Cheng and Lane give young readers a glimpse into a night in the life of the cat-size creature, another of Australia's lesser-known indigenous species. Driven by the need to feed her young, the quoll - a carnivore that devours live prey such as insects, small mammals, birds and reptiles, as well as what it can scavenge - treads a fine line between being predator and prey, as it is a target for feral cats and foxes. Unlike other creatures, the quoll's young are dependent on her to teach them the ways of the wild, and there are some lovely illustrations of them playing with each other as they learn their survival skills.
This is an ideal introduction to this fascinating creature for younger readers who enjoy creating a relationship between the subject of their reading while learning so much at the same time, which the "split personality" of the text of this series provides. And for those who want to know more, there are teaching notes available.
This review can also be found here.
Recommended by: Barbara Braxton, Teacher Librarian, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA
See more of her recommendations:
500 Hats http://500hats.edublogs.org/
The Bottom Shelf http://thebottomshelf.edublogs.org/
