Quest for the Tree Kangaroo by Sy Montgomery

Montgomery, S. (2006). Quest for the tree kangaroo. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Summary:
Quest for the Tree Kangaroo is a biography of Lisa Dubak. It is a story of how a girl, who despite the fact that her elementary teachers said that it was weird for a girl to take such an interest in animals and that she was allergic to fur, became an animal scientist. As she got older, she became interested in tree kangaroos, which were elusive and rare. After years of research, she found a fairly large population of tree kangaroos in Papua, New Guinea. The book focuses on a specific trip into the cloud forest of New Guinea. Lisa began tracking the tree kangaroos with radio collars to see what they eat, their patterns, and how they survive. After hiking for three days, Lisa and her team (comprised of scientists, a veterinarian, and a zookeeper) set up camp to try and find tree kangaroos. During this expedition, they found and collared four tree kangaroos. After they had completed their work, most of the team returned to the United States. The rest of the researchers stayed so they could track the tree kangaroos for five months.

Ages:
4th-6th grade

Credibility of Author:
Sy Montgomery is an award-winning author. To write this book, she actually joined the research crew and took part in the expedition to New Guinea to look for tree kangaroos.

National Standards that this book relates to:
Life Science, Science as Inquiry, and Science in personal and social perspective

Access Features:
Quest for Tree Kangaroos contains paintings of maps, many photographs of the rainforest and all its inhabitants. It also contains acknowledgements from the author, a note from the author, a note from the illustrator an index, a how to learn more about tree kangaroos, and a translation of a language that is referred to many times throughout the book.
The book has end pages that are green with brown speckles that is representative of the colors from the rainforest. Some of the pages are colored and a few have photographs that have been lightened with text and other photographs laid out on top.

Description of the Illustrations:
The paintings of the maps were created by Robin Wingrave and the photographs were taken by Nic Bishop who had to carry 25 pounds worth of equipment with him throughout the trip so that he always had his gear with him and would not miss the opportunity to take a great photograph.

Awards:
2007 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book
2007 Orbis Pictus Award
2007 ALA Notable Book for Children
2007 NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children
2006 John Burroughs Honor List of Nature Books for Children
2006 Boston Authors Club Finalist
2006 ASPCA Henry Bergh Children's Book Award

My response to the book:
Before reading this book, I had never heard of a tree kangaroo or read about an expedition into a rainforest to track an animal that has little known about it. I found it very interesting because while it talked about the tree kangaroos, it spent a lot of time focusing on other animals and plants that call the rainforest home.

How I would use this book in my class:
I would use this in connection with the rainforest or animal habitats. It would be a good way to kick start a discussion about all the other animals and plants that live in an area that we do not even know exist. It would also be good for a discussion about the ways that scientists find out more about animals and plants.

Related Texts:
Montgomery, S. (2001). The Snake Scientist. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Montgomery, S. (2004). The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans . New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

There are 79 pages and the book is divided into subsections.