The Growing Season: Raccoon Rescue by Kama Einhorn

These woods are wide and wet and wild. These woods are soft and green and mossy. And now these woods are our new home.

We knew exactly what to do when we got here, even though we're only twenty weeks old. Here we are living where we were supposed to live all along.

Four helpless baby raccoons, each no bigger than a lemon, are discovered abandoned in a hollow tree. Kind human hands lift them out of their nest and they are transferred to just the right place for such orphans, an animal rescue center called WildCare. A kind raccoon specialist named Shelly takes them under her wing.

Feeding comes first, for the little raccoons have been alone for three days. But first Shelly paints their toenails four different colors, Flashy Fuschia, Blue Me Away, Orange Zest, and High Line Green. Since the tiny babies looks so much alike at this stage, Shelly must know which is which as they are cleaned and fed bottles in matching colors. Carefully weighed and bottle-fed every two hours, the little orphans begin to thrive, gaining weight and settling in to life in the baby raccoon nursery.

"I, Mr. Green, have always been very clever. I was the first to figure out how to use the nipple on the bottle, and, later, how to use a lot of our toys."

With the largest of the four, Mr. Blue, leading the way, the little rescue raccoons grow fast,  mastering all sorts of foods, from fruit to acorns to crayfish (after all, they are omnivorous, just like their human caretakers), and by the time the youngsters are about five months old, they are ready for Mr. Blue to lead them into the woods where a pond awaits them with all kinds of delicious goodies and games.

Big Mr. Blue seems seriously ready to disappear into the woods right away. Two others follow quickly. But Mr. Green is more reserved about following.

"I was the last one to disappear into the wild.

Shelly called up to us in our tree. "You know what to do!" she said. About one second later, we turned all our attention to dinner. And so the forest feasting began."

With their manual dexterity, their omnivorous diet, and considerable intelligence, North American raccoons have spread over much of the globe. That success has made them prone to injuries and also likely to become urban problems, which is where animal rescue and relocation centers come in, raising lost babies, helping hurt adults, and finding them safe homes in wild areas. Kama Einhorn's just published Raccoon Rescue (True Tales of Rescue) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), amply illustrated with adorable color photos, offers elementary readers a close look at the fun and serious work that goes into raising wild animals to return successfully to their native environments. Readers will enjoy the funny situations that baby raccoons get into as they learn about raccoon's natural behaviors that make them so successful as North American wildlife. Author Einhorn offers an appendix--an author's note, index, and glossary, and advice on how to help her favorite animals life with humans safely--which makes this a great source for animal science reports. "Raccoons Rule," is the word for this book!

The Making of a Regal Beagle: The Duchess and Guy: A Rescue-to-Royalty Puppy Love Story by Nancy Furstinger

Once upon a time, a happy-go-lucky beagle named Guy found himself without a family or place to call home.

Guy was just another down-on-his luck dog, three years old and homeless, but his fortune was about to change.

A young woman named Meghan spotted him in the rescue shelter and fell in love-at-first-sight with him. Already the owner of a rescue dog named Bogart, she knew Guy had a lot to learn about being in a two-dog family, but he turned out to be a quick study. But little did he know that his happy new life was in for a big change!

One day Meghan met her match when she fell in love with a British prince named Harry.

He treated her like the princess Guy always knew she was.

Guy gave his paw of approval.

But gaining the approval of the whole royal family was something else. And Guy was game to give it a try.

He liked the idea of living in a place like Barkingham Palace! But there were a lot of ways for a dog to run afoul of the royals. Digging holes in the gardens, leaving muddy footprints in the palace, and chasing squirrels up the royal trees could get him in trouble with the most importance personage in the kingdom--Queen Elizabeth II herself.

Could he keep a stiff upper snout with the Queen's guards? Could he learn not to spill Queen Liz's tea? Could an American rescue beagle fit in with the queen's preferred pets, her pampered porgis? But Queen Liz is a noted dog lover, and although her beloved porgis Candy and Vulcan had to give Guy the sniff of approval, he was soon trotting through the garden with them on the Queen's daily walks.

Noted animal advocate Nancy Furstinger's timely The Duchess and Guy: A Rescue-to-Royalty Puppy Love Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019) tells the true story of down-at-the-paws pup whose rags-to-riches story makes for quite a lost dog tale. Furstinger slips in a pitch for rescue animals, and with the help of artist Julia Bereciartu's pleasingly recognizable illustrations of Markle and all the royals (even little William and Charlotte), pup-loving kids will find this happy story of a homeless hound who found himself quite a family a really fun read. Everyone loves a happily--ever-after story, and with a new little royal expected this year, it looks like author Nancy Furstinger has the premise for a sequel just waiting to be written.

Expect the Unexpected! The True Adventures of Esther the Wonder Pig by Steve Jenkins et al

Esther was a little piglet.

She was rescued when she was six weeks old and arrived in a laundry basket.

She looked up at her dads with those eyes and that smile.

It was LOVE!

She was the littlest pet when she came to live in a small apartment that already had two dogs and two cats. But Esther was a good eater, and soon graduated from her basket to a cat bed. But she continued to grow--from cat beds to progressively bigger and bigger dog beds.

Her dads were confused.

"We thought she was supposed to be a mini-pig!" they said.

But when she looked up at the with those eyes and that smile, it was LOVE!

Esther ate everything she could find. She even broke the oven door--perhaps looking for dessert!

And Esther continued to grow. She outgrew the apartment, and they all moved to a small house. Esther got a single bed to sleep in, and then her own room with a double bed. But she outgrew that bed, too. By the time Esther hit 600 pounds plus, there was not enough space for anyone to sit in any room in the house. But when they looked at her, it was still--

LOVE!

So they loaded up everything, two dogs and two cats, and a now 650 pound pig and moved to a big farm, where there was plenty of space for a pig and other animals that needed rescuing, too. Even when Esther wandered off and was nabbed decimating a neighbor's apple tree,

When they looked at those eyes and that smile... it was LOVE.

Esther was part of the family, and families come in all shapes and sizes!

Following the success of their best-selling memoir, Esther the Wonder Pig: Changing the World One Heart at a Time Steve Jenkins, Derek Walter, and Caprice Crane adapted their story to picture book format, The True Adventures of Esther the Wonder Pig (Little, Brown and Company, 2018), a salute to the unforeseen consequences of pet ownership, not to mention LOVE! With the gently humorous illustrations of Cori Doerrfeld and photos of the real Esther the Wonder Pig, kids will love the story of the wonderful expanding pig and its plea for rescue pet adoption as well at their Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. See more about Esther here

Stayin' Alive! Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild by Catherine Thimmesh

Teeny-tiny panda cub Tao Tao--weigh in a approximately 4 ounces (1/900th the size of his mother)--was born in August of 2010, in a semi-wild training enclosure, delivered by his mama, Cao Cao, with no human intervention. Tao Tao was the first captive cub born naturally, just as he would have been in the wild, showcasing right from the git-go a significant change in the three-stage change training program.

Wild pandas are endangered, on the brink of extinction; in their natural range in China, only a tiny fraction of its original area remains because of encroachment of human activity which destroys their habitat. Despite their robust size, pandas don't have the resiliency of animals like raccoons, rabbits, and kangaroos, which adapt to living near humans easily. Pandas are big, required to eat eighteen hours a day to maintain their weight, but their diet is mostly limited to bamboo. Pandas reproduce infrequently, raising only one cub at a time, and cubs grow up slowly, requiring close care and teaching by their mothers for a couple of years. This lack of resiliency means that survival of their species now depends on reintroduction to the wild by cubs born in captivity, but even healthy cubs raised with the help of humans have had a hard time surviving in the wild.

"Reintroductions... are not guaranteed to work. But most of the time, the alternative of doing nothing means extinction."

But Cao Cao was lucky; he was one of the first cubs to be brought up only by his mother in a large protected area with minimal exposure to humans. For that, at Panda Camp the "counselors" get to play dress-up.

Now--as if it were Halloween or a day at a Disney theme park--the team don their panda suits whenever the enter the enclosure to deliver bamboo. Alas, they can't play with the huggable, lovable cub, not even when he becomes irresistible as he learns to run and roll about playfully. The caretakers weren't particularly comfortable in the heavy, hot panda suits. And they stank! Panda poo and pee were rubbed all over their fur so they'll smell like a panda."

With only about 1,864 pandas left in the wild, Cao Cao is an important graduate of Camp Panda. Not only is he part of the work to restore a healthy population of his species, but giant pandas themselves are an "umbrella species," one whose habitat preservation also works for other endangered animals, in the case of southeastern China, the snow leopard, the snub-nosed monkey, and the red panda.

Catherine Thimmesh's Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) offers students an engrossing study of how animal scientists work to save some of the planet's most important endangered species. Author Thimmesh, winner of the American Library Association's prestigious Sibert Award for informational books for young people, takes vicarious happy campers along to spend some time at Camp Panda as specialists from China and other nations work together to help preserve this signature animal, the giant panda, a worldwide symbol for the rescue of a threatened species.

Filled with charming color photos of this most appealing animal and written in an easy-going but informative style, with solid backmatter for the middle reader environmentalist--glossary, bibliography, and index--and with a useful section, "Stepping Up to Save a Species--What Can You Do?" this informal but informative book offers much for the curious animal lover and young research report writer alike.