When Beavers Flew: An Incredible True Story of Rescue and Relocation

by Kristen Tracy, Luisa Uribe (Illustrator)

Overview

"This fascinating picture book tells the unique, quirky, and true story of how Elmo Heter saved 76 beavers from destroying a town in Idaho by parachuting them into uninhabited wetlands"--

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593647523
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	07/23/2024
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.45(w) x 11.28(h) x 0.47(d)
Lexile:	AD760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Kristen Tracy grew up in a tiny town in Idaho near Yellowstone Park surrounded by untamed and fascinating animals. She is a poet and YA author and has recently started writing picture books. Her debut picture book A Cub Story was published in 2021. Kristen Tracy young adult novels include Lost It, Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus, Hung Up, and Project Unpopular. She won the Emily Dickinson First Book Award from the Poetry Foundation for her collection Half-Hazard.

Luisa Uribe is the illustrator of Areli is a Dreamer, which was named a best book of the year from Kirkus, NYPL and Booklist, and My Brother is Away that received three starred reviews and was a Charlotte Huck honor book and a Charlotte Zolotow honor book. She lives in Bogotá, Colombia, with her partner and two cats.

Editorial Reviews

2024-04-05
Nuisance beavers find a new home.

In 1948, in fast-growing McCall, Idaho, beavers were looked at as pests. Game warden Elmo Heter tried to remove them, but it was hard to keep semi-aquatic animals happy on a long horseback journey. He came up with an innovative solution: flying them into the mountains and dropping them by parachute into Idaho’s backcountry. (In the aftermath of World War II, surplus parachutes were readily available.) Elmo designed a box that would open when it landed and experimented with a test beaver he named Geronimo. (Readers probably won’t know that this was what World War II airmen shouted as they parachuted out of planes.) Once he was certain the boxes would work, he captured 75 more beavers and had them all flown and dropped into a mountain wilderness where beavers had been wiped out years earlier. A later survey revealed that the beavers had done just what Elmo had intended: They dammed streams and made a wetland. Tracy’s storytelling is succinct, straightforward, and appropriate for her young audience. She emphasizes the advantages of Elmo’s excellent idea, both for the beavers and for the wilderness; backmatter addresses later controversies about wildlife relocation and newer methods. Uribe’s muted digital artwork portrays the details of Elmo's planning, the beauty of the landscape, and some very appealing beavers. These spreads would show well at storytime.

A celebration of an early environmental success. (author’s note, selected sources) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews

"A celebration of an early environmental success." —Kirkus Reviews

"The presentation of the story [is] a heroic one....will prompt discussion around environmental conservation and human/animal coexistence." —The Bulletin

From the Publisher