Book Review: Red Spotted Newt, by Doris Gove ([big] Children's Book)

[Otterwoman]

Book Review: Red Spotted Newt, by Doris Gove. Illustrated by Beverly Duncan. (NY: Atheneum, 1994, 28 pages.)

Here is another children's book on the natural history of the red-spotted newt. This is for an older child, maybe one that likes animals and wants to learn on their own, or one that likes to learn science with his parent reading. (Maybe even one that's 47 and came to newts later in life). While I can't really recommend an age, I can say that perhaps a little parental assistance is in order as the young reader will have to contend with these terms: digestive enzymes, larva, oxygen, carbon dioxide, caddis fly larva, cold-blooded, hibernation, spermatophore, and poison glands. The book even has a little index.

The pictures are watercolors and as realistic as paintings can be. They are very nice.

The book follows the life of a female newt from an egg being laid by her own mother, through the larval stage, hunting and evading predators, metamorphosis, and shed-eating. She begins to explore life on land, and we watch her doing more hunting, evading predators, even being spat out by a frog, and crawling into the ground on the path of an old tree root to sleep through winter. In the spring there is a particularly heart-stopping description as she crosses a road; by this time you've spent over a year with this creature and you're pretty attached! Finally she migrates back to her natal pond. There is a quick environmental message that she's lucky her pond hadn't been drained or bulldozed during her two year walkabout. She returns to the pond, mates, and lays eggs as the circle of life is completed.

The account is excellent and true to life. The author knows her stuff. This introduction to the life of the red-spotted newt is highly recommended. I learned a lot from it myself when I first read it and even while re-reading it for this review. I even keep it on the shelf with my adult books...........Yeep! I mean, my salamander books for grown-ups.

Available used on Amazon at this moment for 17¢...If you keep Red-spotted newts, SNAP IT UP!! And then add to the thread, whether you agree with my assessment.