I’m Building A Nest
Saskia Gwinn and Adam Ming
Happy Yak

Author Saskia Gwinn entrusts Bird to act as our guide in this journey to discover how other creatures build their homes.. We meet more than fifty large and small : can any of them surprise Bird and show that their home is best?

First Bird visits other nest builders including a stork that reuses its stick nest year after year, a trumpeter swan that builds a nest on a beaver’s floating lodge and a red-headed woodpecker that pecks a hole in a tree trunk.

Next to be investigated are spiders. these eight-legged arachnids make webs for a variety of purposes. The garden web spider’s web is an insect trap; the golden diving bell spider weaves a web under water to trap air then uses it as a submarine and the crab spider makes a balloon of silken threads that float on the wind, enabling it to find a new home. Is Bird impressed by these? Well yes, but not persuaded.

Do you know which animal’s home has a feeding tunnel, a larder and a bedroom as well as a super-speedy escape tunnel? It’s a mole, one of the tunnellers we meet.

These are just some of the places of residence Bird discovers, but at the end of a long learning journey, there’s been a change of heart in our feathered escort. It concludes, ’Every home is best for the clever creature that made it.’

Curious young readers will enjoy discovering the wealth of animal homes on our planet and be amused by the speech bubbles and Adam Ming’s playful illustrations.