The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Extinct Animals
Sami Bayly
Lothian Children’s, 2024
130pp., hbk., RRP $A39.99
9780734421395
From the introduction…
Extinction is not an unusual phenomenon. In fact, 99 per cent of species that heave ever roamed the earth are now extinct. Most prehistoric animals no longer exist because of five mass extinction events that happened over a 540-million-year period. Research continues to this day to discover the exact conditions that the the Big 5 but each one was the result of catastrophic events like cooling climate, volcanic eruptions or, in the case of dinosaur extinction, an asteroid colliding with the planet 65 million years ago.
Today , the rate at which species are becoming extinct is thought to be 1000 to 10 000 times higher than the natural extinction rate. Hunting, overfishing, habitat destruction , pollution, climate change and the introduction of invasive species are all modern causes of extinction. If we aren’t careful, the sixth mass extinction event will be the result of human choices and actions…
Sadly, words like ‘extinction’, ‘endangered’, ‘sustainability’, ‘climate change’ are all part of the vocabulary of even our younger students these days, and learning about the destruction of the environment and the need to protect the planet are an integral part of the classroom curriculum as much as literacy and maths. Thirty years ago I was asked to write a series of teaching units focused on sustainability and based on children’s stories for a national curriculum body, and while we were able to identify a sufficient number eventually, it was not an easy task. Today almost every other book has an environmental message of some sort.
Nevertheless, children have always been fascinated by those creatures that are extinct, creatures that they are not ever going to see again in their lifetime (unless the science and ethics of cloning are resolved) and in this new release from award winning, natural-history illustrator Sami Bayly , they can discover so much information about 60 of the natural world’s 45 300 extinct and critically endangered animals whether that be something familiar like the African Forest Elephant which is classified as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, something long-gone like the quinkana, a large land-dwelling crocodile, or something close to home like the southern corroboree frog, also critically endangered. Each has its own double-page spread with a full=page full-colour illustration as well as data and details about their appearance, diet, status, habitat and other ‘fun facts’.
At a time when there is a belief that “everything is available on the internet”; our children have greater access and connectivity than ever before; and some schools are dismantling their non fiction collections, it can be unusual for students to make more than a general inquiry for “books about…” But when you discover them seeking out a particular author and requesting “anything new from Sami Bayly” in the way they would ask for something by Anh Do or another favourite fiction author, then you realise that not only do they have a deep and abiding interest in the world around them- testament to the efficacy of the curriculum – but they know whose work is accurate, current, reliable and accessible.
Read any bio of Sami Bayly and it is littered with awards she has won for her work, and my prediction is that this is another that will be attracting great attention.