Well this should be interesting. A new book is dropping today with some lovely illustrations. I pre-ordered my copy from amazon. Here’s the review I found from “Ms Yingling reads:”

In this beautifully illustrated picture book, the complicated relationship between beavers and their ecosystem is explored, with special emphasis on how they interact with otters. Beaver first finds a stream, then sets out to painstakingly cut down trees, dam up the stream, and create his lodge. A female beaver arrives and the work continues. The newly created pond attracts a variety of wildlife, including birds and beetles who live on the trees that the pond causes to die.

When Otter arrives, its a sign that the area is healthy, but the otters often damage the dam in order to get to other bodies of water, and are loud and rambunctious. The otters eat different foods from the beavers, so the two are able to coexist. In addition to the story, with its watercolor illustrations rich in the blues and greens of the aquatic setting, there is information at the back of the book about beavers, otters, and the building of dams.

Strengths: Collard does a great job at finding topics that are of interest to children and educators alike, and also balances stories and information nicely. I can’t say that I knew a lot about beavers and their effect on the environment, so I learned a lot from this. It would be a great book to hand to a reader who has picked up Terry Lynn Johnson’s Rescue at Lake Wild.

Weaknesses: I wouldn’t have minded a little more information about how beavers change their environments by building dams, but it’s not really necessary for this book.

What I really think: This is a great choice for readers who are a little too young for the amount of information included in books like this author’s Hopping Ahead of Climate Change or Firebirds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests and would make a great read aloud for classes studying ecology, animals, or getting along with others!

Hmm just checking but I don’t see a mention of the fact that otters mooch off all the things that beavers provide and give nothing in return. Oh except sometimes they eat the babies. I guess that would be a really upsetting children’s book huh?

Now to be totally fair to the attractive moochers I thought long and hard about this yesterday and determined that it’s possible that the way they poop all those delicious nutrients onto the shore after devouring all the salmon and crayfish that beaver ponds nurture it’s possible that those otter recyclings provide nutrients for then new willow that coppices in the area. Which ultimately feed the beavers.

So I guess, on reflection, otters DO give something back to the friendship. Their shit.  Beavers give their time and their effort and their homes and sometimes their lives. And otter give their shit.

Haven’t we all had ‘friends’ like that?

The illustrations by Meg Sodano are really lovely. If you’d like to pick up a copy of your very own they go on sale today at Amazon.