Snow School by Sandra Markle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While I didn't like this as much as Waiting for Ice, Markle & Marks are consistently good at presenting a realistic tone for what it might feel like to be an animal. The bloodiness and brutality of a predator/prey life is strong in both the words and the pictures. Words and pictures are in a corresponding relationship throughout the book. Marks' watercolors are just impressionistic enough to avoid a sense of photo-realism. While his animal figures are impeccably drawn, the looseness of the watercolor helps him emphasize dynamics and emotional tone over mere representation.
Being a trail runner I worry about cougars sometimes, so I've done a bit of research, and the one picture in this book that doesn't feel right is the one where the mother leopard is on the top of a high precipice looking down at a group of ibex. Everything I have read would suggest that a hunting cat would never choose a perch that would put it in relief against the sky. The watchword is, if you've been out on a trail, you've probably been stalked (but didn't know it). So while a snow leopard perched on a high rock may be dramatic, if they did things like that they probably wouldn't be so hard to find in the wild.
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