Steve Swinburne

In Good Hands

Behind the Scenes at a Center for Orphaned and Injured Birds

Photographs by Steve Swinburne.
Published by Sierra Club Books, 1998
Hardcover 0-87156-397-5

Reviews

Children's Literature

Ages 7 - 11. Sixteen-year-old Hannah volunteers twenty hours a week at the Vermont Raptor Center. As readers follow her around, she explains what happens at the Center, how birds are nursed back to health and released back in the wild or kept safely in the center if their injuries are such that they could not survive on their own. There is no watering down of the realities; raptors are birds of prey. The center raises and feeds them mice and helps train the birds to catch live ones in their cages before they are released. The captivating text offers plenty of solid information about North American raptors and is accompanied by interesting photographs, especially the one in which Hannah launches the barred owl she had rescued back into the wild. Couple this with Hawk Highway in the Sky: Watching Raptor Migration by Caroline Arnold (1997, Harcourt) and Hawk Hill by Suzie Gilbert (1996, Chronicle) for a comprehensive look at raptors.

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