First in a new children's series from the Cornell Lab Publishing Group and award-winning author and artist, Caren Loebel-Fried, A Perfect Day for an Albatross sweeps you into an albatross's world of wind, rolling seas, boisterous dancing, and their intense commitment to one another and their nestlings.
Set on Midway Atoll, where 72 percent of the world's Laysan Albatrosses make their nests, M?lie, an albatross, must protect her egg until her mate returns. Join M?lie as she dances, hunts, and soars over the ocean swells. Illustrated with original hand-carved, hand-pulled, hand-colored block prints, evoking the culture and habitats of Albatrosses, with flowing water-colored block prints that make A Perfect Day for an Albatross a glorious treat for the eyes, as well as the heart.
A Perfect Day for an Albatross is compatible with Bird QR for streaming sounds, video, and other content. Back matter includes a Bird QR link to watch live albatrosses on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology HD cam in Hawai'i.
Caren Loebel-Fried is an award-winning author and artist from Volcano, Hawai'i. Birds, conservation, and the natural world are the foundations for her work. Caren has created seven storybooks to date, including Hawaiian Legends of the Guardian Spirits and Lono and the Magical Land Beneath the Sea, which use the ancient art of block printing, taught to her by her mother. Caren's books have been recipients of the American Folklore Society's Aesop Prize for Children's Folklore and the Hawai'i Book Publishers Association's Ka Palapala Po'okela Awards.
In addition to books, Caren creates iconic, educational art for local and national conservation organizations and government agencies, including the United States Fish & Wildlife Service, Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, Kilauea Point Natural History Association, and Conservation Council for Hawai'i in the Hawaiian rainforest, she lives among several native bird species, but lately seabirds have captured her imagination. Caren spent five weeks on Midway Atoll counting and researching albatrosses, and has been visiting other locations where new work is being done to help seabirds. Caren's aim is to bring people, especially children, closer to the natural world with the hope that they will want to help care for it.
"[...] Anyone who has had the great fortune to visit Midway Atoll will agree that Caren Loebel-Fried captures the “magic” of Midway in A Perfect Day for an Albatross. We may not necessarily all have the great fortune and luck to visit Midway, but Caren Loebel-Fried offers her readers the next best thing – to dance and soar with albatross from page to page in a stunning, inspirational, and educational book."
– Wieteke Holthuijzen (30-12-2017), read the full review at The Birder's Library