cover image Condor Magic

Condor Magic

Lyn L. Hoopes. Benefactory, $12.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-882728-95-4

This rhyming portrait of the North American condor touches on ""40,000 years [that the vulture] soared over North America, shore to shore,"" including its demise, endangerment, the recent success of breeding the bird in captivity and its reintroduction into the wild. Hoopes (The Unbeatable Bread) asks readers to imagine themselves as condors. Although the poem brims with factual details, the rhyming couplets make her attempts to personify the condor seem flip (""You're a curious dude,/ a ravenous raven,/ disgustingly crude,/ rudely behaving""), and tragic events come off as casual (""Farms and ranches brought DDT;/ you were shot for sport/ and curiosity""). More successful are Stone's sumptuous oil paintings on textured canvas. Their impressionistic mood lifts the tale beyond the tactile into a nearly mystical realm: shadows of fingered feathers stretch across landscapes and clouds take on animal images. Perspectives shift gracefully between the panoramic (rock-ribbed canyon walls echo the shape of the condor's fanned wings) and the intimate (a view from inside a chick's shell reveals a researcher's kind face). This title outshines two others in a series published by the Humane Society of the United States: Chessie, the Travelin' Man, a manatee that travels the eastern seaboard; and Chocolate, a Glacier Grizzly, a bear that lives in Glacier National Park. Ages 5-10. (Nov.) FYI: Plush toys and audiocassettes are also available for all three titles; in addition, Chessie has a video.