The Children's Book of Birds

Birds for children by a woman who watched them: how a nest is built, what a young bird is taught, why a bird sings and what it does in winter. Olive Thorne Miller wrote a dozen such books and campaigned against the plume trade that was destroying the species she described. She never asks the reader to feel anything about a bird before understanding it. Forty-two plates from 1590 to 1900, with painters such as Rosa Bonheur and John Constable, show children watching nests, birds and open country, matching a book that asks young readers to look closely before they feel.