02/13/2009

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'Twig' Pens Children’s Bird Book: Fun with, Facts on Fine Feathered Friends

Writer:

Kurt Knebusch
knebusch.1@osu.edu
330-263-3776

WOOSTER, Ohio — Know a kid who likes birds? Or who thinks it’s funny what some birds do, including on some people’s heads?

Buy them a copy of Beware the Flying Steamer Duck! (ages 9+, 116 pp., paperback), a new small book by Ohio State University’s “Twig Walkingstick.”

They’ll learn even more about birds.

And also about what some birds do. Including, if not on some people’s heads, on statues and even on their own legs and feet.

And other less earthy, more civil behaviors.

Steamer Duck! is a collection of 42 bird-related “Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick” stories — about dodos and cuckoos, cacklers and chickadees, night peeps, bird diapers, yellow bellies and more.

Among the book’s short (two-page) entries: “Bluebirds? Happiness!” “Blargh of the Albatross,” “Things That Make Hummingbirds Go Hmm” and “Urohydrosis? U Don’t Want to Know.”

“Smart Stuff” is a weekly science and nature column for children. It goes to newspapers, web sites and other media outlets and to students, parents and teachers. It’s written at a fourth-grade reading level.

“Twig” is Ohio State science writer Kurt Knebusch, who works for the university’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) in Wooster and for Ohio State University Extension.

He tries to bring both facts and fun to the column and now to the book.

He hopes to share “a small first light of discovery,” he writes in the book’s introduction — about birds and about nature in general.

Also included are three short entries on three big bird-friendly discoverers — John Muir, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold — and one on biophilia: the bond people feel with other living things. Including, in theory, ones that practice urohydrosis.

Buy Steamer Duck! through OSU Extension’s secure online eStore, http://estore.osu-extension.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2158. Price: $9.95 plus shipping and, for Ohio residents, state sales tax.

Or write to CommTech, OARDC, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691. For each copy include $9.95 plus $1.68 shipping and, for Ohio residents, 67 cents state sales tax (total per copy in Ohio: $12.30). Make checks payable to Ohio State University.

Call (330) 263-3780 for more information.

Also now available are new editions of Twig’s first two books, Purple and Green and Stinky in Spring (116 pp., paperback, $9.95; bugs, plants, fish, farming, wildlife; previously out of print) and Hairy Blenny and the Monkeyface Prickleback (96 pp., paperback, $9.95; aquatic life).

Buy both, too, at OSU Extension’s eStore (http://estore.osu-extension.org/); enter the titles in the search box.

Or buy all three together from CommTech for $25.95 and save about $4; the discount isn’t offered through the eStore. Add $4.95 shipping and, for Ohio residents, $1.75 sales tax for each set of three (total per set in Ohio: $32.65).

All three books were selected for inclusion in the 2008 Buckeye Book Fair. Billed as Ohio’s largest literary event, it featured the works of more than 100 Ohio writers, illustrators and photographers.

Hairy Blenny won a 2008 gold award for writing and the 2008 outstanding professional skill award for writing from the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences, an international professional organization of writers, editors, graphic designers and others.

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Editor: If you’d like to get a review copy of any of the three books, call or e-mail April Martin of CommTech/OARDC, (330) 263-3780, ct-oardc@osu.edu. Also, see the Steamer Duck! cover and table of contents and several excerpts from it at http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~news/story.php?id=5002