The team behind The Mangrove Tree here traces the history of Puerto Rico's indigenous birds in jewel-toned collage. "Above the treetops of Puerto Rico flies a flock of parrots as green as their island home," they write.
Science and poetry rest compatibly together in Roth and Trumbore's text, as they distinguish the birds' "bright blue flight feathers" and add juicy language ideal for reading aloud: "Iguaca! Iguaca! The parrots called as they looked for deep nesting holes in the tall trees." A vertical orientation to the pages emphasizes the parrots' habitat among the treetops, and the sky-high battles against hurricane winds and predators such as the red-tailed hawk and pearly-eyed thrashers. Humans' arrival on the island--the first people in 5000 BCE--pose the greatest threat. Author and artist describe the birds' instincts to survive (mating rituals and how "each pair raised one family of chicks every year") even as humans' need for housing and farmland threatens the parrots' forests, and their numbers shrink from hundreds of thousands to just 24 parrots by 1967. The U.S. and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ("not a state, not an independent nation, but something in between," the text explains) established the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program to save the birds.
Children will be heartened by the scientists' positive results and learning how these birds are making a comeback. An afterword with photographs of the sanctuaries, as well as a timeline and resources for further reading round out this heartening story, beautiful to behold. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness