Join us for Animal Tales !
Our Park Naturalists and volunteers come to your local library each month to share a story about a native animal and lead a craft or activity . These programs are FREE to attend and are most appropriate for preschool to upper elementary age children . Advance registration is required by contacting your library .
MAY Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre
Turkey vultures soar on the balmy air , looking for their next stinky feast . These birds don ’ t hunt ― they like their food to be already dead , and their eating habits serve a very important ecological role . Vultures are part of nature ’ s clean-up crew . In her signature poetic , energetic style , acclaimed nature writer April Pulley Sayre introduces young readers to the world of the turkey vulture . The gorgeous illustrations by Caldecott Honor-winning artist Steve Jenkins capture these birds in all their surprising majesty .
Find your location !
CLAYTON-LIBERTY TWP Tuesdays at 10:30 a . m . Call library at ( 317 ) 539-2991 to register in advance June 6 , Aug . 1
MONROVIA Tuesdays at 1 p . m . Call library at ( 317 ) 996-4307 to register in advance June 6 , Aug . 1
14 • www . HendricksCountyParks . org
JUNE Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni
Two best friends , a minnow and a tadpole , are practically inseparable until the tadpole grows legs and decides to explore the world beyond the pond . When the tadpole , now a frog , returns to tell his friend of the extraordinary things he ’ s seen , the minnow , now a fish , tries to follow in his footsteps , but quickly finds that land is not what he expected . Friendship truly saves the day in this imaginative tale of a fish out of water .
“ In me , there is the red of miry clay , the brown of spring floods , the gold of ripening tobacco . I am , in the deepest sense , colored .” From these fertile soils — of love , land , identity , family , and race — emerges The Home Place , a big-hearted , unforgettable memoir by ornithologist J . Drew Lanham .
Dating back to slavery , Edgefield County , South Carolina — a place “ easy to pass by on the way to somewhere else ”— has been home to generations of Lanhams . In The Home Place , readers meet these extraordinary people , including Drew himself , who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him . As his passion takes flight , however , he begins to ask what it means to be “ the rare bird , the oddity ”— to find joy and freedom in the same land his ancestors were tied to by forced labor , and then to be a black man in a profoundly white field .
JULY Lousy Rotten Stinkin ’ Grapes by Margie Palatini
In Palatini ’ s humorous take on Aesop ’ s “ The Fox and the Grapes ,” Fox enlists Bear , Beaver , Porcupine , and Possum to help grab some out-of-reach fruit . Concocting an elaborate scheme , Fox ignores the other animals ’ simpler , sounder solutions . Moser ’ s considered watercolors humorously show realistic-looking creatures displaying human responses , from calculating to exasperated .
BROWNSBURG Wednesdays at 4 p . m . Call library at ( 317 ) 852-3167 to register in advance May 3 , June 7 , July 5 , Aug . 2
JAMESTOWN Thursdays at 3 p . m . Call library at ( 765 ) 676-6190 to register in advance May 4 , June 8 , July 6 , Aug . 3
ROACHDALE Thursdays at 4 p . m . Call library at ( 765 ) 522-1491 to register in advance June 8 , July 6 , Aug . 3
THE HOME PLACE • BY J . DREW LANHAM
By turns angry , funny , elegiac , and heartbreaking , The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging , at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of Black identity in the rural South — and in America today .
AUGUST In the Trees , Honey Bees by Lori Mortensen
Inside the hive views of a wild colony of honey bees offer close ups of the queen , the cells , even bee eggs . Simple verse will engage a young child , while sidebars with fascinating information satisfy the somewhat older child . Parents , teachers , and kids will love this picture book . The detailed art shimmers with life , highlighting each hair or grain of pollen on the bees . A wild hive in a tree in her own backyard served as a model for the artist !
AVON Fridays at 2 p . m .
Call library at ( 317 ) 272-4818 to register in advance May 5 , June 9 , July 7 , Aug . 4
DANVILLE Fridays at 4 p . m .
Call library at ( 317 ) 745-2604 to register in advance
May 5 , June 9 , July 7 , Aug . 4
RECOMMENDED READING FOR ADULTS
Dr . J . Drew Lanham is a professor of wildlife at Clemson University , where he holds an endowed chair as an Alumni Distinguished Professor and was named an Alumni Master Teacher in 2012 . Lanham received his B . A . and M . S . in Zoology , and his Ph . D . in Forest Resources , from Clemson .