Meet five animals on their beastliest behaviour in this funny and absorbing narrative non-fiction title from award-winning author Nicola Davies. From award-winning children’s author and biologist Nicola Davies, this is a collection of funny, fascinating and true stories about animals "behaving badly" – which is to say, getting the better of us human beings! We start with the wolverine in Canada, who will trash your home and everything in it, and then meet the kea in New Zealand – park your car in kea country, and you'll find out the hard way that these clever birds have sharp beaks and a love of mischief. Next we visit India and learn about macaque monkeys, who have shoplifting, highway robbery and baby-snatching on their impressive rap sheet, before jetting off to the US. In Florida we find drumfish, whose strange humming calls will keep you up all night long, and in Alaska Sitka whales, who gang up to steal thousands of dollars' worth of cod from under the noses of fishermen. The book ends on a charming high, as Nicola describes two creatures that work together with humans: little brown birds that help us collect honey in East Africa, and bottlenose dolphins that help fishermen catch mullet in Brazil. With lively illustrations from rising talent Adam Stower, Animals Behaving Badly is a splendidly witty and original take on narrative non-fiction for younger readers.
Author
"I was very small when I saw my first dolphin," says zoologist Nicola Davies, recalling a seminal visit with her father to a dolphin show at the zoo. Enchanted at the sight of what she called the "big fish" jumping so high and swimming so fast, she determined right then that she would meet the amazing creatures again "in the wild, where they belonged." And indeed she did—as part of a pair of scientific expeditions, one to Newfoundland at the age of eighteen and another to the Indian Ocean a year later. In WILD ABOUT DOLPHINS, Nicola Davies describes her voyages in a firsthand account filled with fascinating facts and captivating photographs of seven species of dolphins in action. Nicola Davies' seemingly boundless enthusiasm for studying animals of all kinds has led her around the world—and fortunately for young readers, she is just as excited about sharing her interests through picture books. The zoologist's latest offering puts a decidedly quirky twist on her years of experience: POOP: A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE UNMENTIONABLE is a fun, fact-filled guide to the fascinating world of poop across species. "As a zoologist, you are never far from poop!" the writer explains. "I've baked goose poop in an oven with my dinner, looked at bat poop under the microscope, and had my T-shirt stained pink with blue-whale poop. I was obviously fated to write this book." The exceptional combination of Nicola Davies' zoological expertise and her first-rate children's writing is apparent in her remarkable catalog of award-winning titles. Her first book with Candlewick Press, BIG BLUE WHALE, was hailed by American Bookseller as an "artfully composed study" offering "language exactly appropriate for four- to seven-year-olds and precisely the right amount of information." In ONE TINY TURTLE, Nicola Davies' clear, compelling narrative follows the life of the rarely seen loggerhead turtle, which swims the oceans for thirty years and for thousands of miles in search of food, only to return, uncannily, to lay her eggs on the very beach where she was born. The author's next book, BAT LOVES THE NIGHT, is a tenderly written ode to a much-misunderstood flying mammal, the pipistrelle bat, while SURPRISING SHARKS—winner of a BOSTON GLOBE-HORN BOOK Honor Award—contains unexpected facts about another one of the planet's most infamous animals. When she is not off on scientific expeditions, Nicola Davies lives in a cottage in Somerset, England, where she is lucky enough to have pipistrelle bats nesting in her roof.
