Catching Air: Taking the Leap with Gliding Animals

CLASSROOM GUIDE

Junior Library Guild Selection ∙ 2017 Outstanding Science Trade Book 2017, National Science Teachers Association

Only a few dozen vertebrate animals have evolved true gliding abilities, but they include an astonishing variety of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.

North America’s flying squirrels and Australia’s sugar gliders notwithstanding, the vast majority of them live in rainforests. Illustrated with arresting photographs, Catching Air takes us around the world to meet these animals, learn why so many gliders live in Southeast Asia, and find out why this gravity-defying ability has evolved in Draco lizards, snakes, and frogs as well as mammals. Why do gliders stop short of flying, how did bats make that final leap, and how did Homo sapiens bypass evolution to glide via wingsuits and hang gliders? Or is that evolution in another guise?
Sneed B. Collard III (Missoula, MT)graduated with honors in marine biology from U.C. Berkeley and earned his master’s degree in scientific instrumentation from U.C. Santa Barbara. He is the author of Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests (a Junior Library Guild selection); Double Eagle; Shep:Our Most Loyal Dog; Dog Sense; Pocket Babies and Other Amazing Marsupials; and The Prairie Builders: Reconstructing America’s Lost Grasslands (winner of the AAAS/Subaru/Science Books & Films Prize for Excellence in Science Books). The first of his 76 books, Sea Snakes, was published in 1993. In 2006, Sneed received the Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award for his body of work.
"This informative book explores questions such as what adaptations in the animals’ bodies enable them to glide, why gliders throughout the world are forest dwellers, and how gliding helps them to survive. A respected science writer, Collard offers a well-researched, well-focused, and beautifully illustrated presentation of a topic seldom covered in children’s books." - Carolyn Phelan, Booklist