Here are 15 books that Beauty and the Beak fans have personally recommended if you like
Beauty and the Beak.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Besides being an avid sketchbook keeper, author, and illustrator, I also collect weird and random facts. In my Everything Awesome book series, I love discovering cool facts to share with readers about some of my favorite topics, including sharks, space, and dinosaurs.
Written by an author who also happens to be a zoologist, Eugenie Clark’s life story shows incredible devotion to teaching and learning about her beloved sharks and overcoming ridiculous gender obstacles of the time. A true hero!
Bonus: more weird and awesome shark facts can be discovered in the back.
One of New York Times' Twelve Books for Feminist Boys and Girls! This is the story of a woman who dared to dive, defy, discover, and inspire. This is the story of Shark Lady. One of the best science picture books for children, Shark Lady is a must for both teachers and parents alike! An Amazon Best Book of the Month Named a Best Children's Book of 2017 by Parents magazine Eugenie Clark fell in love with sharks from the first moment she saw them at the aquarium. She couldn't imagine anything more exciting than studying these graceful creatures. But…
I’m a lover of wildlife and have written several nonfiction picture books on the topic, includingWinged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery, Cougar Crossing: How Hollywood’s Celebrity Cougar Built a Bridge for City Wildlife, and Ocean Soup: a Recipe for You, Me, and A Cleaner Sea. I’m also a humane educator, which inspires the focus of all my nonfiction picture books on “solutionaries” helping people, animals, and the planet. At heart, my books—which have won Golden Kite Nonfiction and Eureka! Nonfiction Honors and more—aim to inspire compassion, inclusivity, and positive action.
I picked this book because it’s a great reminder that plants are wildlife, too—and they’re as important and as endangered as animals! It’s also a truly fascinating story of the woman who figured out how to study the rainforest canopy, a hundred feet in the air! I love how this book tells one woman’s inspiring story while at the same time inspiring kids to care and learn more about the much-needed flora on our planet.
NSTA/CBC Best STEM Book John Burroughs Association Riverby Award Honorable Mention, Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award
This picture book biography tells the story of Meg Lowman, a groundbreaking female scientist called a "real life Lorax" by National Geographic, who was determined to investigate the marvelous, undiscovered world of the rainforest treetops.
Meg Lowman was always fascinated by the natural world above her head - the colors, the branches, and, most of all, the leaves and mysterious organisms living there. Meg set out to climb up and investigate the rain forest tree canopies - and to be the first scientist…
I’m a lover of wildlife and have written several nonfiction picture books on the topic, includingWinged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery, Cougar Crossing: How Hollywood’s Celebrity Cougar Built a Bridge for City Wildlife, and Ocean Soup: a Recipe for You, Me, and A Cleaner Sea. I’m also a humane educator, which inspires the focus of all my nonfiction picture books on “solutionaries” helping people, animals, and the planet. At heart, my books—which have won Golden Kite Nonfiction and Eureka! Nonfiction Honors and more—aim to inspire compassion, inclusivity, and positive action.
This emotional story of one real moon bear, written by two top wild animal experts, hits right in the heart. An important story of what happens when wild animals are caged in laboratories, and what it takes to heal them afterward, this book lingers in the mind for a long time. Jasper’s personality makes everyone fall in love with him, and readers will, too. They’ll also feel compelled to protect every hunted creature (I sure did!).
For years Jasper, a moon bear, lived a miserable existence, held captive in a cage by bear farmers in rural China. The farmers extracted the bile from Jasper's body and sold it to be used in traditional medicines. It's a horrific practice and conducted on thousands of moon bears each year. But now Jasper has the chance to be free and live a life away from pain and torture. In 2000, Animals Asia, an animal welfare organization, rescued Jasper and other captive moon bears, taking them to its Moon Bear Rescue Centre. Here veterinarians attended to the bears' wounds, hoping…
I’m a lover of wildlife and have written several nonfiction picture books on the topic, includingWinged Wonders: Solving the Monarch Migration Mystery, Cougar Crossing: How Hollywood’s Celebrity Cougar Built a Bridge for City Wildlife, and Ocean Soup: a Recipe for You, Me, and A Cleaner Sea. I’m also a humane educator, which inspires the focus of all my nonfiction picture books on “solutionaries” helping people, animals, and the planet. At heart, my books—which have won Golden Kite Nonfiction and Eureka! Nonfiction Honors and more—aim to inspire compassion, inclusivity, and positive action.
This book is a classic and a favorite of mine; I loved reading it to kids as a humane educator and seeing their eyes widen. I still marvel at how this book illustrates so simply and powerfully what happened to the entire ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park when wolves were reintroduced after being eliminated by humans years earlier. It’s a hugely impactful story about how any one species in an ecosystem affects all the others—and kids love it!
Two renowned children’s book creators teamed up to make this stirring picture book that tells the story of how, over a century, wolves were persecuted in the United States and nearly became extinct. Gradually reintroduced, they are thriving again in the West, much to the benefit of the ecosystem. This book will teach a new generation to appreciate the grace, dignity, and value of wolves as it promotes awareness of the environment’s delicate balance. Paired with gorgeous paintings by landscape artist Wendell Minor, Jean Craighead George’s engaging text will inspire people of all ages to care about the protection of…
A decade ago, we were living in Washington, D.C., wrapped up as journalists in the daily news cycle. We began camping to get out of the city and quickly became fascinated with birds. We’ve been writing about birds ever since, on our website, FlyingLessons.US: What we’re learning from the birds,” and now with a book about the extraordinary work across the hemisphere to save birds. There’s a storehouse of books, articles and guides on birdwatching, but very little on what’s happening to bird populations overall. We believe the story of birds is one of the best ways to open a window on the environmental issues that are among the pivotal topics of our time.
The Bald Eagle is the conservation success story of our time, but its path hasn’t been easy, as this highly readable book makes clear.
The collapse and rebuilding of the nation’s official symbol helps bring home the plight of birds in general, as well as what it will take to restore depleted species.
The eagle stands apart, since it’s the highest profile bird, with special protection no other species has been given. And yet, there’s much universal in the story of the relationship between birds and people.
The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you're not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as "majestic" and "noble" yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the United States' founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction.
I am a photographer based in Oxford who has published books for 40 years. I love to be outside, whether it's enjoying the urban landscape of historic Oxford or the wild beauty of the Scottish hillside. The charm of the natural world and the romance of historic buildings are equal enthusiasms. To capture some essence of this, either by camera or paintbrush is a true skill. And it's not easy! To really create a new view is a constant challenge which is my driving force, in my own books I try for images that are just slightly different, atmospheric, romantic, yet always recognisable. I love to search out others who achieve the same, this is why I love these books.
Bob Bateman is a great wildlife observer and a consummate artist, passionate about conservation. This beautifully illustrated book carries the message of care for the environment, its inhabitants, the world! And it carries it in gentle words and striking artistic paintings of nature. His paintings are accurate and realistic, made with superb artistic skill, I love to just flick open the book and stare. It makes you realise the beauty of the natural world. I have met Bob a couple of times, he is a thoughtful, measured, and highly knowledgeable man. His artistic skill is extraordinary.
A stunning collection of 200 bird species painted by the world-renowned wildlife painter.
"Robert Bateman's paintings and drawings... reveal a vision of the beautiful and stark possibilities of the natural world. They are compelling and haunting." -- The Washington Post
At a time when bird species are disappearing rapidly, the poignant beauty of Robert Bateman's paintings is more urgent than ever. It reminds us why Bateman was compelled to study and paint his subjects and why we must work to secure their futures.
Bateman has sketched and painted bird life in every corner of the globe. His special relationship with…
Many people are intimidated by poetry. For a big part of my life, I was too. So much of the poetry I had been exposed to was either indecipherable or irrelevant to me. Then I discovered some poems that I loved—accessible poems about subjects I related to. I started collecting poetry books, by both adult and children’s poets. Eventually, I was inspired to write poetry of my own. Today, I’m a poetry advocate, recommending my favorites to anyone who shows interest. The satisfaction I get from poetry boils down to this: When I read a good poem, I think to myself, “Wow, I didn’t know words could do that.”
After writing 14 children’s books about art appreciation, I decided to try my hand at children’s poetry. When I read this collection of haiku by Jack Prelutsky, it was a revelation. Each poem is a first-person description of an animal, full of rich, unexpected language. By writing in first-person, Prelutsky broke one of haiku’s cardinal rules. But it worked—and inspired me to write my own collection in the first person as well. Here’s one of my favorites poems in his book:
Raucously we caw.
Your straw men do not fool us.
We burgle your corn.
Seventeen haiku composed by master poet Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by renowned artist Ted Rand ask you to think about seventeen favorite residents of the animal kingdom in a new way.
On these glorious and colorful pages you will meet a mouse, a skunk, a beaver, a hummingbird, ants, bald eagles, jellyfish, and many others. Who is who? The answer is right in front of you. But how can you tell? Think and wonder and look and puzzle it out!
A creature whispers:
If not for the cat, And the scarcity of cheese, I could be content.
My fascination and emotional connection with animals have been lifelong. However, it wasn't until my second year as an undergrad student that I realized that human-animal relationship could be examined from philosophical, historical, and anthropological perspectives. Over the past couple of decades, the conversations around the roles of non-human animals in diverse cultural, social, and material contexts have coalesced under the interdisciplinary field known as Animal Studies. I draw upon this literature and use my training in law and PhD in the history of science to explore the ties between knowledge and ethics in the context of animal law.
In this field-defining classic, Ritvo boldly showed the academic world that the relations between humans and other animals are worthy of historical inquiry.
The book delves into various subjects in Victorian life: hunting and the designation of nature reserves, the emergence of pet shows and their relations to class formation, meat consumption, and its national symbolism. The book’s impressive breadth of sources spans from popular newspapers’ illustrations to agricultural studbooks.
While primarily focused on nineteenth-century England, Ritvo's insights have inspired researchers, including myself, to examine similar themes in different cultures and historical periods.
When we think about the Victorian age, we usually envision people together with animals: the Queen and her pugs, the sportsman with horses and hounds, the big game hunter with his wild kill, the gentleman farmer with a prize bull. Harriet Ritvo here gives us a vivid picture of how animals figured in English thinking during the nineteenth century and, by extension, how they served as metaphors for human psychological needs and sociopolitical aspirations.
Victorian England was a period of burgeoning scientific cattle breeding and newly fashionable dog shows; an age of Empire and big game hunting; an era of…
I am a writer and journalist who went back to study cats after my retirement. I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew. I was out of date and overconfident that experience could beat knowledge. I needed knowledge as well as experience. So I took a degree and a masters. These books will help anybody who wants to improve their knowledge of cats. Rescuers, pet owners, and behaviour people: we need to stay up to date and learn more if we want to help cats lead happy lives.
Cats often don’t get enough space in books about pet behaviour. This is the easiest-to-read scientific book about cats that you will ever need. Students, make sure it is in your university library. It cuts the information into easy chunks and yet keeps all the references that you might need to follow up. Trudi is a top cat behaviourist in the UK with a background as a veterinary nurse, so she really, really understands what makes cats tick.
Practical Feline Behaviour contains all the relevant information that a veterinary nurse or technician needs to understand and handle the behaviour and welfare of house cats, and to offer safe and practical advice to clients. There have been ground-breaking advances in our understanding of feline behaviour in recent years and, to protect the welfare of cats, it is increasingly important that anyone involved with their care, especially those in a professional capacity, keep up to date with these developments. This approachable and down-to-earth text describes the internal and external influences on feline behaviour; on communication, learning, social behaviour, the relationship…
I’ve published many books for children, but this one is truly special. The Everybody Club is a collaboration with my dear friend Linda Hayen in memory of her daughter, Carissa. As a child, Carissa started a real-life Everybody Club. The first members were toys, dolls, the family cat, and her brothers, one of whom had severe disabilities. Carissa died in a car accident at the age of 16, and this book is Linda’s way of sharing her daughter’s generous spirit with the world. A note for adults at the end of the book shares this backstory.
“Different, weird, and wonderful”—this is how the author describes “lovely,” and I think that’s a great description of the book itself. Lovely is quirky and bold and puts a different spin on the usual tropes. For example, “black” shows a fair-skinned woman in a black ensemble, holding a black umbrella (a goth Mary Poppins!) and “white” shows a black woman with flowing white hair and striking white eyebrows. I especially loved the hairy leg with fancy, pearl-draped shoes and the prosthetic leg with sporty shoes. There’s even a character with a monobrow that spells “lovely.” And bonus points for using the fun word “stompy”!
Big, small, curly, straight, loud, quiet, smooth, wrinkly. Lovely explores a world of differences that all add up to the same thing: we are all lovely!
Interested in
birds,
US Navy SEALs,
and
biological species?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
birds,
US Navy SEALs,
and
biological species.
