Kelly Ball

For the birder who wants an all-purpose, lightweight scope, the TSN-88A delivers and then some.

Bestselling author Amy Tan’s drawings and essays are a vehicle for studying her backyard birds. What distinguishes this from similar efforts is how Tan imbues those interpretations with her attentive, charming prose.

Science writer Rebecca Heisman’s engaging debut offers a lively narrative account of the various—and unorthodox—methodology used to understand the many unanswered questions of bird migration, and some of the scientists who have made it all possible.

In this work, academics, artists, a comic strip writer, naturalists, novelists, and poets unite their disparate voices around a shared appreciation of birds.