Here are 100 books that The Lion and the Bird fans have personally recommended if you like
The Lion and the Bird.
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.
When we were doing research for Dora the Explorer (I’m one of the show’s three creators), we read picture book versions of the episodes to preschoolers. The researcher would always begin by saying, “I’ve got a story to tell you.” The preschoolers would clap, cheer, and sometimes even hug the kid next to them. Then, my story would begin. At least with group 1, before we made a lot of changes, the children would invariably fall on their backs and beg to be taken back to class. Everyone longs to be told a great story. So, for my list, I picked some of the greatest read-aloud children’s books ever “told.”
A.A. Milne wrote these stories as bedtime stories for his son, using his son’s own stuffed animals as the heroes.
Children are very forgiving when it comes to parents making up bedtime stories (they’ll help by pointing out inconsistencies and suggesting plot points), but children will also appreciate it if you read them these tales, which are some of the greatest, funniest, sweetest, most profound bedtime stories ever told.
An award-winning production, with an all-star cast including Stephen Fry and Judi Dench, brings to life one of the best-loved children's books of all time.
Packed full of fun and adventure with Winnie-the-Pooh and all his friends in the Hundred Acre Forest. This is a wonderful dramatisation of Winnie-the-Pooh with original music. This captivating adaptation conveys all the magic and humour of AA Milne's classic stories.
The cast includes the following stars:
Pooh - Stephen Fry Piglet - Jane Horrocks Eeyore - Geoffrey Palmer Kanga (and Narrator) - Judi Dench Roo - Finty Williams Rabbit - Robert Daws Owl -…
I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. In addition to the usual two-year program, I studied an extra semester, where I read all the best children’s books about friendship. I wanted to learn how the great authors such as A. A. Milne, James Marshall, and Arnold Lobel wrote stories full of so much heart and humor. My love of friendship stories burgeoned from there. And now, it’s with great delight that I offer you my Best Children’s Books About Friendship—and, of course, my very own friendship story, Big Bear and Little Fish.
George and Martha, two very large hippos, are so unique they are a delight to read about. Martha loves making split pea soup, pots and pots of split pea soup. She loves looking at herself in the mirror and even wakes up during the night to look at herself. George likes to peek in windows. You can imagine these traits aren’t the most friend-winning qualities around. But George and Martha talk things out. They set each other straight. And best of all, they are always there for each other. I feel all warm and glowy every time I read about them, and I bet your young readers will too.
In this picture book classic that belongs on every reader's shelf, two lovable hippos impart funny lessons on the true meaning of friendship.
Like all best friends, George and Martha do everything together. George and Martha teach each other (and adoring readers) that even in a close friendship, privacy is important, practical jokes can sometimes backfire, and among other things, pouring split pea soup into your loafers to spare the chef’s feelings is not the best-laid plan.
A man with a talent for friendship, James Marshall defined its very essence in his stories about the world’s two best friends. Each…
When we were doing research for Dora the Explorer (I’m one of the show’s three creators), we read picture book versions of the episodes to preschoolers. The researcher would always begin by saying, “I’ve got a story to tell you.” The preschoolers would clap, cheer, and sometimes even hug the kid next to them. Then, my story would begin. At least with group 1, before we made a lot of changes, the children would invariably fall on their backs and beg to be taken back to class. Everyone longs to be told a great story. So, for my list, I picked some of the greatest read-aloud children’s books ever “told.”
Arnold Lobel’s masterpiece series about friendship is labeled an I Can Read book on the cover, Reading Level 2, With Help. “With help” is the key phrase because if you’re the one who’s helping a child read these books, that means you’ll get to read them, too.
Lobel writes so beautifully and with so few words. I think his work is right up there with Dr. Seuss.
This beautiful commemorative picture book edition of the Caldecott Honor title Frog and Toad Are Friends is the perfect way to celebrate Frog and Toad's 50th anniversary!
This handsome edition features matte paper, remastered artwork, and a green ribbon book marker. It makes a lovely gift for collectors, fans of children's literature, and anyone and everyone who loves Frog and Toad!
First published in 1970, Frog and Toad Are Friends was the first of the four beloved Frog and Toad books. This special edition contains all of the original stories-from the story about going swimming, to finding lost buttons!
I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. In addition to the usual two-year program, I studied an extra semester, where I read all the best children’s books about friendship. I wanted to learn how the great authors such as A. A. Milne, James Marshall, and Arnold Lobel wrote stories full of so much heart and humor. My love of friendship stories burgeoned from there. And now, it’s with great delight that I offer you my Best Children’s Books About Friendship—and, of course, my very own friendship story, Big Bear and Little Fish.
Frank and Bean opens with Frank, who visits the great outdoors to find peace and quiet. Then, Bean shows up. He is literally a one bean band, with a drum, trumpet, triangle and more. Needless to say, they don’t initially hit it off. But then it gets dark, and fears bring them together. Before you know it, they are making beautiful music together. The text is full of wry humor presented with a wink for adults, while the illustrations are pitched perfectly to make five- to eight-year-old readers giggle along. I love this friendship story because it’s so much fun to read out loud.
When the introspective Frank meets the gregarious Bean, can they find a way to make beautiful music together? Dry wit and hilarious illustrations introduce a new unlikely pair.
Frank likes peace and quiet. He likes his tent, his pencil, and writing in his secret notebook. Bean likes noise. He likes his bus, his trumpet — toot, toot! — and making music. Loud music. But Bean is missing something: he does not have words. What will happen if Frank shares his words with Bean? With a laugh-out-loud narrative by Jamie Michalak, author of the Joe and Sparky series, and Bob Kolar’s…
I teach people how to enjoy birds. I’ve led bird walks, taught seminars, co-owned a wild bird feeding shop, and written two books and well over a hundred newspaper columns on birds. Over the years, I’ve conveyed a fair heap of information about birds because accurate knowledge and biological understanding are valuable tools for fostering appreciation. But I consider making birds relevant and vivid in our everyday lives to be far more important than simply accumulating facts. These are a few books that get to the heart of what I am most excited about: changing how we see and hear birds and thereby enriching our experience of every single day.
The thing I love about the subject of this book is that it is visible all around me. The great yearly drama of the nesting season is the most exciting part of watching birds. This is where the good stuff happens: song and courtship, battles over territory, the miracle of nest construction, the cuteness of babies, and the development of monogamy.
Heinrich’s book opened my eyes to this story. He merges his deep scientific knowledge with personal observation, making that broader understanding applicable to what I can observe myself. He explores the different ways birds have of living their lives, constantly asking how we can explain those patterns not as random assemblages of behaviors but as comprehensible evolutionary strategies. He makes birds make sense.
Why are the eggs of the marsh wren deep brown, the winter wren's nearly white, and the gray catbird's a brilliant blue? And what in the DNA of a penduline tit makes the male weave a domed nest of fibers and the female line it with feathers, while the bird-of-paradise male builds no nest at all, and his bower-bird counterpart constructs an elaborate dwelling? These are typical questions that Bernd Heinrich pursues in the engaging style we've come to expect from him - supplemented here with his own stunning photographs and original watercolors. One of the world's great naturalists and…
I’m an Australian zoologist, botanist, and best-selling prize-winning writer. An earlier book of mine, Feral Future, inspired the formation of the Invasive Species Council, an Australian conservation lobby group. My Where Song Began, was a best-seller that became the first nature book to win the Australian Book Industry Award for best General Non Fiction. It was republished in the US. I have co-edited Wildlife Australia magazine and written for many magazines and newspapers, including nature columns as well as features. As a teenager I discovered new lizard species, one of which was named after me.
Leila Jeffreys treats the birds in her photography studio like celebrities destined for the cover of Vogue. She takes time getting to know them and letting them know her, so that instead of just seeing birds she sees into them, and they into her.
Her book of bird portraits is a testament to trust between divergent species. She mentions a black-breasted buzzard coming to accept her photographic gear then suddenly becoming very focussed on her: "It’s an exhilarating feeling when a bird makes this transition and we begin to communicate silently as we study each other. The intelligence of this bird was profound."
The birds in her portraits look variously intense or relaxed, curious or knowing, engaged or merely comfortable, soulful, intelligent, refined, and so much else. As a child, Jeffreys was ‘besotted’ with animals and saw them as people, imagining they could talk to her. That shows through…
Fine art photographer Leila Jeffreys captures the beauty and diversity of some of our most colourful and elegant feathered friends. From the birds of her native Australia to North America, Jeffreys seems to see into the very souls of these model-like creatures with her stunning and evocative portraits.Jeffreys works with animal rescue and conservation groups to find subjects to photograph. Her love and compassion for her subjects is evident throughout, and she captures their personalities in her delightful portraits: Commander Skyring the Gang-Gang Cockatoo, Dexter the White-Bellied Sea Eagle, Mrs. Plume the Budgerigar and friends, are as delightfully whimsical as…
I’m an Australian zoologist, botanist, and best-selling prize-winning writer. An earlier book of mine, Feral Future, inspired the formation of the Invasive Species Council, an Australian conservation lobby group. My Where Song Began, was a best-seller that became the first nature book to win the Australian Book Industry Award for best General Non Fiction. It was republished in the US. I have co-edited Wildlife Australia magazine and written for many magazines and newspapers, including nature columns as well as features. As a teenager I discovered new lizard species, one of which was named after me.
This is not strictly an Australian bird book but is so rich in Australian content it might as well be.
American science writer Jennifer Ackerman takes us into the minds of birds and delivers surprises on every page. An explosion of recent research has shown birds to be far more sophisticated than was thought possible and Australian birds epitomise that. In her introduction Ackerman says that Australian birds crop up throughout her book for their extreme behaviours, intelligence, and ecological diversity.
She travelled Australia to see them and to interview experts, including me. Asking ‘Can a lyrebird lie?’ she offers evidence that they do. She tells of fairy-wrens and zebra finches communicating important information to their young while these are still inside their eggs.
We learn of brush turkey chicks, after hatching from the egg, spending more than two days digging to escape from the nest mound, then receiving no…
'A celebration of the dizzying variety of bird life and behaviour, one that will enthral birders and non-birders alike' The Observer
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds.
'There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.' This is one scientist's pithy distinction between mammal brains and bird brains: two ways to make a highly intelligent mind. But lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviours they've previously dismissed…
I’m an Australian zoologist, botanist, and best-selling prize-winning writer. An earlier book of mine, Feral Future, inspired the formation of the Invasive Species Council, an Australian conservation lobby group. My Where Song Began, was a best-seller that became the first nature book to win the Australian Book Industry Award for best General Non Fiction. It was republished in the US. I have co-edited Wildlife Australia magazine and written for many magazines and newspapers, including nature columns as well as features. As a teenager I discovered new lizard species, one of which was named after me.
For great feats in nature the epic migrations of millions of wading birds are difficult to beat. Immense stamina is needed for days of non-stop flight, plus sophisticated navigational skills – which remain improperly understood – to guide birds by day and night and through storms that blow them off course.
Andrew Darby begins on a beach in South Australia where two grey plovers are fitted with radio transmitters shortly before their migrations north. He follows their travels, flying after they do to Broome in north-western Australia, then to China to see the mudflats they refuel on, then to their breeding habitat inside the Arctic Circle, then back again to northern Australia.
Important to his story are the dedicated and sometimes obsessive people Darby meets in each location, many of them unpaid, who use innovative technology and intellect to work out where, exactly, the birds go on their travels and…
As the sun lowered and turned Gulf St Vincent fiery, they each called a high-pitched 'peeooowiii!', flashed their black wing-pits, spread their tail skirts and took flight.
Andrew Darby follows the odysseys of two Grey Plovers, little-known migratory shorebirds, as they take previously uncharted ultramarathon flights from the southern coast of Australia to Arctic breeding grounds. On these extraordinary flights they chance predators, typhoon weather and exhaustion before they can breed, and maybe return to familiar southern feeding grounds. But the greatest threat to these, and other long-distance migrants on the flyway, is China's dragon economy, engulfing their vital Yellow…
Hiking in the flower-covered hillsides of Central California as a nature-loving kid, I couldn’t help but wonder about my companions. One of my first purchases (with babysitting money!) was a wildflower guide. I’ve moved around the country many times and every time I’ve had to start over, make new plant acquaintances and discoveries—always an orienting process. Of course, I’ve also studied plants formally, in college and in my career, and (honestly, best of all) via mentors and independent study. All this has shown me that flowers are more than just beautiful! They’re amazingly diverse, and full of fascinating behaviors and quirks. In fact, they are essential parts of the complex habitats we share.
This author’s thesis sounds radical, but it shouldn’t be. She argues persuasively for us to leave bugs in our yards and gardens be, or even to encourage them. Why? Because for every pest, there is a natural enemy. Tolerate a couple of tomato hornworms and they’ll become beautiful sphinx moths, zipping around your flowerbeds, pollinating “more than 200 plants in less than 7 minutes!” Leave nibbling aphids in your garden, and hungry ladybugs will show up and dispatch them. Stop damaging the food web by using pesticides and herbicides/weedkillers. Learn how closely plants and animals are related; indeed, they co-evolved. Such an interesting and important book!
An engaging, illustrated introduction to the beneficial insects, birds, and other animals that help a garden thrive. The birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that inhabit our yards and gardens are overwhelmingly on our side - they are not our enemies, but instead our allies. They pollinate our flowers and vegetable crops, and they keep pests in check. In Garden Allies, Frederique Lavoipierre shares fascinating portraits of these creatures, describing their life cycles and showing how they keep the garden's ecology in balance. Also included is helpful information on how to nurture and welcome these valuable creatures into your garden. With…
I teach people how to enjoy birds. I’ve led bird walks, taught seminars, co-owned a wild bird feeding shop, and written two books and well over a hundred newspaper columns on birds. Over the years, I’ve conveyed a fair heap of information about birds because accurate knowledge and biological understanding are valuable tools for fostering appreciation. But I consider making birds relevant and vivid in our everyday lives to be far more important than simply accumulating facts. These are a few books that get to the heart of what I am most excited about: changing how we see and hear birds and thereby enriching our experience of every single day.
Many bird books aim to teach about birds and how they live, conveying factual information while ignoring (or lamenting) our human interactions with them. There are also books about birding, telling picaresque stories of extreme birdwatching adventures, or delving into technical minutiae aimed at maximizing one’s skill at bird identification. This book doesn’t fall into either of those categories; instead, it focuses on the rich and positive rewards of paying attention to birds.
What was that sound? Why did those birds all fly up into the tree? What will I discover if I simply sit still in the woods, patiently watching and listening? When I started asking—and being able to answer—these questions, my whole world changed.
Award-winning naturalist and author Jon Young's What the Robin Knows reveals how understanding bird language and behavior can help us to see more wildlife.
A lifelong birder, tracker, and naturalist, Jon Young is guided by three basic premises: the robin, junco, and other songbirds know everything important about their environment, be it backyard or forest; by tuning in to their vocalizations and behavior, we can acquire much of this wisdom for our own pleasure and benefit; and the birds’ companion calls and warning alarms are just as important as their songs.
Deep bird language is an ancient discipline, perfected by…
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
birds,
Quebec,
and
Montreal.
