The Superpower Field Guide: Ostriches, written by Rachel Poliquin, reviewed by Klaudia Janek

Summary: This non-fiction book on Ostriches is the third book in the Superpower Field Guide series. Poliquin’s humorous style of writing paired with Firth’s entertaining (but informative) illustrations make for a really great author/illustrator team. Why should students pick up this book? “You’re thinking that ostriches are just overgrown chickens with ridiculous necks, skinny legs, and bad attitudes.” Poliquin assures readers they will know ostriches by the end of this book and will be convinced that they have superpowers. Eno is the name of the ostrich in the book. He has horrible feet. However, Eno’s feet are actually “two-toed torpedoes and claws of death.” Readers will also learn about the African savannah and the Serengeti. Like the other books, the chapters are once again organized by the ostriches superpowers. The text also contains a lot of fun trivia about ostriches, along with charts and a glossary.

Straight Talk for Librarians: I have really been enjoying this series. While it is marketed for younger students, I really think that high school readers will get a lot out of these books. The text is really engaging and it’s not often that you laugh out loud reading biology-like information. I did not realize how large and powerful ostriches are. The illustrator chose complementary earthy colors and you can easily spot the other books in the series based on this style. I think this is a pretty unique series and I highly recommend it for elementary through high school libraries. I am going to set up a portable display and bring these books to the biology classrooms to just have in there. My hope is that students will just pick them up and start reading. Once they get hooked, I will be happy to check it out to them. I think these books can serve as a great inspiration for coming up with topics for animal reports and it’s much more entertaining than the usual lists of animal traits. I think the book (and series) is very interdisciplinary as it shows the possibilities between biology, writing and visual arts. Perfect for an IB school!