Parrots Over Puerto Rico
by Susan Roth and Cindy Trumbore
collages by Susan Roth
The first thing you notice about this
book is that there is no title on the cover. It is a bold display of
three bright parrots, a collage of cut paper so textured you can
practically feel the feathers, almost imagine the birds flying off
the page.
When you open the book, the orientation
is lengthwise, giving an impression of height and depth, perfect for
the setting of this story of near extinction. You can sit with the
parrots in the treetops, soar with them in the blue green sky, get a
bird's eye view of village life in 5000 BCE.
This book chronicles the birds' demise,
from their original habitat, to them being hunted for food, given as
gifts to royalty, battling against red-tailed hawks, and then fighting for survival against other
predators brought to the island by settlers. They lost their homes
to people who needed the trees to build their own dwellings and kept being edged out bit by bit. In
5000 BCE there were hundreds of thousands of them. By 1967 only 24
remained.
This is their story as well as the
story of bringing them back, and a short history of Puerto Rico, to
boot, all in one gorgeous, small, readable and engrossing book. There
is an afterward about the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program, a
timeline of Puerto Rican History and the parrots, an extensive
bibliography, and pictures you could look at forever.
What more could you want in a book?
Available in the library!
