Animals

Happy Book Birthday to Wombat

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Jan 14, 2022 in Animals, BOOK: Wombat Underground, Children's Literature, Reviews | 0 comments

Wombat Underground is on sale this week! And as a book birthday present, a stunning STARRED review from Shelf Awareness:

In an emotionally strong picture book based on natural science, a wombat generously opens his home to other Australian creatures fleeing from a bushfire. Thomson’s dramatic, terse language quickly communicates the serious situation. Santoso’s digital illustrations are striking and tense, making the life-or-death situation the animals face painfully clear. . . .Wombat Underground will likely engender discussion about animals in such precarious situations, but also about how people can protect others (human and animal) in times of danger.

They also called me “prolific” (thanks! I think? One could be a prolific writer of bad prose, I guess, but I am choosing to take it as a compliment) so overall this review thrills me to my toes.

So glad to know what Wombat is out in the world and finding his way to the readers who love him!

From Endangered to Extinct

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Nov 12, 2021 in Animals, Children's Literature, Nonfiction | 0 comments

John James Audubon Letters and Drawings, 1805-1892, MS Am 21 (31), Houghton Library, Harvard University

As I work on three books about endangered animals (elephants, frogs, and lions), I’m enthralled with delighted details about their lives–elephants are scared of bees, some frogs can glide from tree to tree, lions can’t purr but ocelots can. These are the little things that I hope will engage kid’s attention as much as mine, will hook them in and get them reading.

And sometimes I can actually forget how endangered these animals are and what a slim chance we have to create a world where they can thrive. Habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, poaching–all the threats we hear about over and over.

And then I read an article like this on in the New York Times, about the 22 species of animal removed from the Endangered Species List–and not because their population numbers have recovered. Because they’ve been declared extinct.

It feels like a small thing, maybe too small, to write books that could get a new generation of conservationists to care, to hope, to act to keep a diverse world alive. But at least it’s one small thing I can do.

Goodbye to the ivory-billed woodpecker, once called the Lord God bird for its astonishing call. And to twenty-one more animals we will never see again.

A Frog in his Throat

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Sep 22, 2021 in Animals, Children's Literature, Nonfiction | 0 comments

One more delightfully odd frog: Darwin’s frog. The male swallows the fertilized eggs that his mate has laid and stores them in his vocal sac. (That’s the little sac inside the throat that blows up like a balloon to amplify the frog’s call.) They stay there for up to fifty days, until the eggs have hatched and the tadpoles have developed into tiny frogs. And then…