LS 5603 LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

A. Montgomery, Sy. THE TARANTULA SCIENTIST. Photographs by Nic Bishop. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

B. SUMMARY: Montgomery chronicles the study and travel of scientist Sam Marshall and his love of the many types of tarantulas and their environs.

C. CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
80 Pages of WOW! TARANTUAL SCIENTIST is one of those kinds of books. The kind of book that you might find a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th grader fighting for the last copy on the shelf. And the fight would be over who could get their hands on the book first for a pleasure read. Though a great aid for a school report on spiders, tarantulas, French Guiana, rain forests, or modern scientists this book will circulate mainly for its extraordinary high definition colors and details in photo and in text. Nic Bishop has outdone himself with these photographs!

The format of the book is unique and is very well organized. My only complaint is that there is no table of contents in a book of many chapters. The book begins with a double page spread of Central America with a focus on locating French Guiana. From there we have intriguing writing in each cleverly named chapter: Queen of the Jungle, When is a Tarantula a Tarantula?, Science and Spiders, Secrets of the Burrow, Arachnids All Around, Expedition to Les Grottes, Got Silk?, Hairy Mats and Hissing Fits, Tarantula Frontiers, Elle Est Belle, le Monstre.

Many things work together to make this volume special. Sometimes little things really mean a lot and that is certainly the case here. So many little things go together to make a very good book an extraordinary one. Dark rust orange is used as the background for each titled section. White letters are used over the orange color. Each picture description uses the same dark rust orange lettering. It would have been so easy to use black but the book producers wanted the photo captions to stand out from the normal text.

The text is written in a fluid narrative. It teaches more than a textbook could and the language skills of the author prove that writing is truly an art form. Montgomery helps us understand things we may never see; taste, or touch, maybe even things we never knew existed such as the pet spider of Dr. Sam Marshall, Clarabelle. Montgomery’s luminous style is showcased will on page 42, “Meet Clarabelle. She’s a black haired beauty who looks as if she’s just had a French pedicure. At the ends of her long legs her toes are tipped in pink…………one of the very first tarantulas (pinktoes) described by Western scientists. The gentle pinktoes were originally tree dwelling forest tarantulas, but these days they’re happy to build their silky retreats in the eves of houses, in shrubs, and in the tube-like curves of pineapple leaves on plantations, too. Clarabelle lives in the curled leaves of a potted plant that sits on the veranda.”
An other worldly picture of Scientist Sam in the middle of the rain forest looking upwards in contemplation is truly worth a thousand words. Simply the act of teaching a student how much one man loves his job is worth everything, whatever the job. The caption Montgomery writes to the Sam in the rain forest picture, “The diversity of life in the rainforest gives Sam pause to wonder. A huge and ancient tree like the one he is resting on may harbor more types of ants, beetles, spiders, and other small creatures than the whole 260 acres of forest at the Barrow Field Station that Sam looks after in Ohio.”

The writing is certainly clear and lively and Montgomery never talks down to his audience but treats them with respect. From a page full of molted tarantula skins to the selenocosmia tarantula using silk to make a waterproof, tough case for her new eggs to the Avicularia. “When a tree-dwelling Avicularia tarantula molts, it fist opens a large silken hammock, suspended inside its retreat. Then it lies back in comfort to shed its old skin. The spider’s fangs are as white as walrus tusks after molting, but they soon darken like those on the old skin.”

It is easy to see why this title was a Robert F. Siebert honor book. I’m going to look up the winner!

D. REVIEW EXCERPTS:


School Library Journal suggests:

“Grade 5-10-Superb color photos abound in this spectacular series addition. Readers follow the career of Sam Marshall, tarantula scientist extraordinaire, from his "Spider Lab" at Hiram College in Ohio to the rain forests of French Guiana as he hunts for, finds, and studies the creatures he loves so well. The conversational text contains as much spider lore as scientific investigation and provides a cheerful look at a dedicated scientist. (The fact that he did not do well in school may encourage those late bloomers who have not yet found their passion in life or believe it to be far beyond their academic grasp.) Informative, yes, but even more important, this is a vivid look at an enthusiastic scientist energetically and happily at work, both in the field and in the lab, questioning, examining, testing, and making connections. A treat, even for arachnophobes.”

Booklist opines,
“Gr. 4-7. Montgomery and Bishop, who worked together on Snake Scientist (1999), team up once again to deliver another fascinating slice of the natural world. This time they venture to the French Guiana rain forest, where they follow arachnologist Sam Marshall on his quest for his favorite quarry: tarantulas. Enthusiasm for the subject and respect for both Marshall and his eight-legged subjects come through on every page of the clear, informative, and even occasionally humorous text. Bishop's full-color photos, which concentrate on detail, not scale, are amazing--Marshall coaxing an elusive tarantula into the open or bringing readers literally face-to-face with a hairy spider. The section on students' research seems tacked on, but it adds an interesting sidelight to the book, which is longer and richer in both text and illustrations than others in the Scientists in the Field series. Readers will come away armed with facts about spiders in general and tarantulas in particular, but even more important, they'll have a clear understanding of how the answers derived from research become the roots of new, intriguing questions.”


Reviews taken from:


http://www.amazon.com/TARANTULA-SCIENTIST-Scientists-Field/dp/061891577X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7575722-4136600?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193460175&sr=1-1

E. CONNECTIONS:
The most obvious choice would be to read the next Montgomery and Bishop duet in the SCIENTIST IN THE FIELD SERIES entitled THE SNAKE SCIENTIST. Donna M. Jackson has written a similar book called THE BUG SCIENTIST.