Here are the rest of the pack for the booktalk on amazing animals:

• Scruffy: A Wolf Finds His Place in the Pack by Jim Brandenburg. This is a color photo essay for kids by the Northern Minnesota photographer famous for his wolf photos. It tracks a rumpled yearling wolf in a pack on Ellsmere Island.

• Peterson’s Field Guides for Young Adults: Birds of Prey by Jonathan P. Latimer and Karen Stray Nolting with illustrations by Roger Tory Peterson. Kids can be naturalists too and this mini-guidebook will introduce them to the methods that bird watchers use to identify birds. It also includes an abbreviated section of birds of prey common in North America.

• Poppy by Avi; illustrations by Brian Floca. This is a really exciting tale of a young deer mouse who faces the great horned owl, Mr. Ocax, who imagines himself the supreme ruler of Dinwood Forest. The mouse community has outgrown its home and wants to move half of their members to New House where the fields are supposed to be full of grain. Mr. Ocax refuses to let them move, citing Poppy and Ragweed's disobedience as his reason. Poppy undertakes a great journey through the dark forest to see if New House is really all that it's said to be, to find out why Mr. Ocax wants to keep the mice out, and to restore her reputation. Poppy learns to judge friends and enemies for herself rather than relying on the opinions of others and that she possesses all the strength and courage that she needs to survive.
  

• A Bear Named Trouble by Marion Dane Bauer. A young brown bear or grizzly, his jaw broken by a savage kick from a moose, wanders into Anchorage in search of soft food, like that found in bird feeders and garbage cans. He encounters Jonathan, a young boy, one evening in the boy's backyard. Enthralled, Jonathan continues to watch for the brownie, following him into the Anchorage Zoo, where the bear kills his favorite animal, Mama Goose. Incensed, Jonathan reports the bear to the local TV station. Trouble is now a nuisance animal and is being hunted by the game wardens. Jonathan is torn between his desire that the bear pay for hurting the goose and the realization that "taking care" of a bear who is not afraid of humans means that it will be killed. Jonathan is there in the middle of the action when Trouble is finally captured. It all works out in the end. Trouble gets his jaw patched up and a new home at the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth where Jonathan is able to visit him when he returns to Minnesota to help his mother and sister move to Alaska.
  

• Garden of the Spirit Bear: Life in the Great Northern Rainforest by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent with illustrations by Deborah Milton. This is an absolutely beautiful book. Full of rich watercolors depicting life in the rainforests of the Pacific northwest. The pale gold or white spirit bears, which First Nation's people believe are a reminder from the great creator that the earth was once covered with ice and snow, are becoming increasingly rare due to clearcut logging in the area. This book explains the interdependence of the bears, the trees of the forest in which they are born and seek protection, and the rivers which their food source, the salmon, use for laying eggs.

Now to make sure that my booktalk stays within the 13-15 minute time limit.