Pajama Press

“This encouraging animal-rescue story features the world’s fastest animal: the peregrine falcon. Set in the era when scientists realized that DDT was thinning eggshells and endangering many bird species, the story is told in a simple, immediate manner, focusing mainly on the birds rather than on their rescuers. Two peregrines meet at their cliffside nesting site, where the male flies to a great height, plummets down, and then sweeps upward to join the female in an aerial courtship dance. Their first four eggs are taken by a woman lowered down the cliff by a rope. Of their next three eggs, two break during nesting, but they raise the remaining chick. Meanwhile, a rescue team hatches the first four eggs, nurtures the surviving three young birds, and releases them. An owl snatches one, but the others survive as city dwellers, living on a skyscraper ledge. Trained as a scientific illustrator as well as a biologist, Godkin uses soft, precise strokes of oil paint to create scenes of peregrines in captivity and in the wild. An attractive, informative picture book.”

“Threatened with extinction across North America, peregrine falcons were bred in captivity and provided with new territories until their populations rebounded.

Godkin begins her account of this environmental good news by introducing a peregrine pair who return from migration, court and lay eggs, only to have their first eggs taken by a rock-climbing human being…Dramatic oil paintings show falcons in various activities—soaring, diving, hunting and feeding their chicks—and chicks being fed in captivity…this success story will be welcomed by nature lovers. (Informational picture book. 4-7)”

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“In Skydiver, Celia Godkin tells the stories of peregrine falcons, the severe decline in their population caused by the pesticide DDT, and the human volunteers whose intervention is necessary if the population is to recover. Godkin follows the lives of both the wild and incubated birds, as well as providing background material on the fight to ban DDT.

…An accomplished artist, Godkin also gives us pictures of this extraordinarily swift bird swooping and playing in a sunlight sky, as well as endearing depictions of the awkward chicks with their fuzzy white down and the gawky juveniles with their mixture of adult plumage and baby fluff. It is these illustrations — as well as Godkin’s advice to “Look up!” — that will really inform and excite children about these beautiful birds.”

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“Choosing the peregrine falcon as the subject of her latest book is a wise, if not brilliant, choice. There is something about raptors that is particularly fascinating to the young. Perhaps it is their speed or their power or what appears to us as brutality that holds us in awe of these birds of prey.

Godkin’s writing is clear and concise and well-researched…..The author/illustrator’s dramatic full-colour paintings illuminate each page….Skydiver: Saving the Fastest Bird in the World is well worth a place on the shelves of the wildlife section in an elementary school library. Highly Recommended.”

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