Eagle - Hardcover

Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. The latest of Allen and Humphries' books on endangered animals around the world continues to provide a complex, unsentimental view of the relationship between humans and animals. Miguel is the youngest and smallest of the boys accompanying his teacher on a field trip into a jungle in the Philippines. He is afraid when the eagle's shadow first passes over his head, but by the last page, his fear is gone. Allen respects Miguel's feelings about the big animal and realistically portrays the eagle's role as a predator: when the bird hunts the monkey, the text doesn't flinch--not at Miguel's horror or at the eagle's need to eat and feed its family. Like Tiger , this features human characters who live in the land where the creature in focus is found, not simply European eco-rescue teams. The watercolors make the setting specific, and they are shaded in a way that suggests a serious story rather than a brisk, bright one. Older students will be most at home with the extensive text; younger ones may need someone to read the book aloud. Both groups, however, will respond to the story. Mary Harris Veeder

The Philippine eagle is given real substance in this endangered-species treatment, the sixth in a series from Allen and Humphries (Whale, 1993, etc.). Four schoolboys and their teacher are on a field trip into the Philippine jungle to get a firsthand look at the denizens of the forest. Little Miguel can't get a handle on the tangled confusion of it all, the size and wildness of the creatures, the sheer fecundity. It is the eagle that really terrifies Miguel--not just the bird, but its shadow. His teacher tries to chase the fear away, to no avail. Only happenstance can do that--in a close encounter that renders the eagle and Miguel, if not close friends, then close acquaintances. Allen knows how to summon an exotic landscape, but she does go on with the clumsily macho, if good-natured, attempts by the teacher to allay Miguel's fear. Humphries's watercolors, by turns dreamy and crackling, bring to life both the steamy forest and the magnificent bird. (Endnotes) (Fiction/Picture book. 4+) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.