Pets in a Jar: Collecting and Caring for Small Wild Animals (Puffin Science Books)

by Seymour Simon

book data

8 ratings, 4.38 average rating, 4 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		50%
4		37%
3		12%
2		0%
1		0%

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published

May 31st 1979 (first published 1975) by Puffin

binding

Paperback, 96 pages

isbn

0140491864 (isbn13: 9780140491869)

description

Suggestions for collecting and keeping as pets such small animals as snails, toads, worms, ants, butterflies, and starfish.

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05/11/09

Rose rated it:

bookshelves: nature

Read in May, 2009

I read this one with my six-year-old son, who scored six large glass jars at a yard sale for $0.30, and said, "Now can we get slugs?" I hoped to talk him into a praying mantis or maybe some tadpoles instead. This title covers fourteen different pets that can be kept in a jar, inckuding those three (and butterflies, starfish, ants...).

We took turns reading the chapters, stopping so the boy could exclaim things like, "We can cut their heads in half! And make two-heade...more I read this one with my six-year-old son, who scored six large glass jars at a yard sale for $0.30, and said, "Now can we get slugs?" I hoped to talk him into a praying mantis or maybe some tadpoles instead. This title covers fourteen different pets that can be kept in a jar, inckuding those three (and butterflies, starfish, ants...).

We took turns reading the chapters, stopping so the boy could exclaim things like, "We can cut their heads in half! And make two-headed planarian monsters!" and, "Newts are salamanders?! Cool!" and, "Wait, are we in an, um, 'Eastern forest'?"

The book is heavy on the DIY and collecting aspects of keeping pets in a jar, assuming that children will go into the woods to get their critters.

I found the simple black and white, text-heavy format very refreshing, after eight years of Dorling-Kindersley and Usborne nature books that bombard the senses and leave no room for imagination. We had to stop and imagine ourselves doing this because we could not rely on illustrations of other people doing it.

I had thought it would take a week to read this together, but we ended up reading the whole thing one Sunday afternoon. It was interesting. The more we imagined doing it, the more we wanted to know about how to do it, and soon we had abandoned our other plans for the afternoon and were planning field trips. Wemade plans to create a field kit for the boy. This blog post was helpful with that.

Humane issues are sufficiently covered in an old-fashioned Boy Scout kind of way. "No experiment that you try should result in harm to an animal in your care!" the author exclaims, with emphasis, in multiple ways and places. He also exhorts children to take good field notes about the environment they remove the animal from, so they can make the animal comfortable in their jar. The author gives children information on how to be sure they're not collecting endangered species. He explains the need to release them with environmental forethought, too.

I only have one complaint. My son kept saying, "But, there's a sign that says not to do that." I wish the book had helped me figure out what to tell (or ask) my kid to help him think through the ethical and legal repercussions of ignoring such a sign.

This is one that we need to own and keep on hand. I can't see it becoming less useful for grandchildren in a decade or two, and it's laid back, informative, understated imagine-then-do approach will surely become even more rare in non-fiction for children.

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02/18/09

Beth Ann rated it:

This book is out of date and there are ertainly better guides on the care of keeping small critters out there, BUT I still loved this one because it got me obsessed with keeping every little bug and snake and such back in the day.

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