The Longest Journey
An Arctic Tern's Migration
-
- £8.99
-
- £8.99
Publisher Description
Follow the epic annual migration of an Arctic Tern on its sixty-thousand-mile journey to the South Pole and back again, the longest such migration in the animal kingdom.
In their thirty-year lifetimes, Arctic Terns travel nearly 1.5 million miles, that’s enough to fly to the Moon and back three times!
Each year they brave blistering winds, storms, rough seas, and airborne predators as they travel between the Earth’s poles, chasing the summer. In The Longest Journey: An Arctic Tern’s Migration, we follow one such bird as it spreads its wings and sets out to make its first globe-spanning trip with its flock.
Amy Hevron's brilliant, naturalistic artwork mimicking maps and nautical charts is supported by extensive research and paired with material at the back of the book explaining the science behind the life cycle of Arctic Terns.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Named to the Delaware Diamonds Book List
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"She will make it every/ year of her life,/ chasing sun and food/ for thirty years." Hevron pays tribute to the arctic tern and its incredible 60,000-mile annual migration in this awe-inspiring travelogue. After its wintertime birth on the Greenland tundra, an avian traveler heads south, stopping in the Canary Islands, soaring above northwest Africa, resting outside the Cape of Good Hope, and venturing over the polar Southern Ocean, summering in Antarctica before returning north at a breakneck pace, completing the trip back in just six weeks. Hevron sprinkles sound effects throughout ("Kip-kip-kip!") and underscores the strenuousness of the tern's massive journey. The bird narrowly survives a skua attack, "flails against headwinds," "battles" a storm, and "struggles" to keep pace. Digitally collaged acrylic and pencil images foreground the scale of the journey through a mix of maps and renderings of the terns on high. Back matter includes further information and suggested reading. Ages 5–8.
