Migration by Mike Unwin

Ill. by Jenni Desmond. Bloomsbury, 2018. ISBN 9781408889916
(Age: all) Highly recommended. Non fiction. Theme: Animal migration. With bold illustrations that sweep across the double pages, readers will thrill at the stories of the animals that migrate across this planet and the risks they take travelling over inhospitable snow and ice, or seas or mountains.
From the better known, turtles that return to the place of their birth to lay eggs, the emperor penguin, the African elephants in their annual trek for water, the albatross, to the less well known, the globe skimmer dragonfly or the hummingbird, the pages offer a brief summary of the animal and its journey accompanied by an illustrations that begs to be closely scrutinised.
Readers will love the detail, the great white shark that travels 10,000 kilometres to feed on seal, the monarch butterflies that travel in their millions from USA and even Canada to Mexico, a distance of some 5,000 kilometres, to roost and lay their eggs.
The hummingbird travels 800 kilometres from Central to Northern America, but travels over the Gulf of Mexico, a bird the weight of a sugar lump!
While many are large animals, the elephant, emperor penguin, whales and sharks, caribou and wildebeest, many are smaller fish, salmon for example, while some are smaller birds, hummingbird and crane, and two are insects. This is a magical book to dip in to, to savour and reread, to learn about the sweep of the animal kingdom and marvel at the astonishing stories presented.
Fran Knight