28 September 2016 by Jeannie Baker, Candlewick, May 2016, 48p., ISBN: 978-0-7636-7966-8

“There you stood on the edge of your feather,

Expecting to fly.”

-- Neil Young/Buffalo Springfield, 1967

“In a place where mud and sand become sea,

a godwit with white wing patches flies up with his flock.

The moment is right for the long journey north.”

CIRCLE by Jeannie Baker is one of the most beautiful science books I have ever seen. If I were still in retail bookselling, in addition placing it with children’s picture books, I would also display this title in the coffee table book section. The artwork and its reproduction onto the pages of this fascinating bird migration story, is that good. The story will appeal to adults as well as to children.

CIRCLE is dramatic, both in image and narrative. There are mind-blowing illustrations that depict flying and looking downward. We see the creation of new life as the result of innate mating rituals and death from predators. We also see the environmental challenges resulting from the loss of natural habitat and that people and birds can coexist in undeveloped, protected areas.

As Baker explains in the Author’s Note, “The bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica baueri) in this story make the longest unbroken journey of any animal in the world. Before each Arctic winter they migrate more than 7,000 miles [11,265 kilometers] from their northern home in Alaska to their southern home in Australia and New Zealand, without even stopping to rest.”

I’m going to keep that in mind the next time I start to grouse because the nearest parking space is three blocks from my destination.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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