Strange Creatures: The Story of Walter Rothschild and His Museum - Hardcover

Lita Judge feels a connection to Walter Rothschild. As a shy child, she too grew up with wild creatures. Her grandparents were ornithologists and shared their home with birds of prey. Every summer Lita helped care for the eagles, owls, and hawks her family studied. And she shared another connection too: her grandparents' scientific mentor, Ernst Mayr, began his career on an expedition collecting for Walter Rothschild.

Lita is the author-illustrator of several picture books, including One Thousand Tracings, which was an ALA Notable book and received the International Reading Association Children's Book Award. About her book, Pennies for Elephants, School Library Journal wrote: "This uplifting tale will surely captivate and hopefully inspire contemporary children."

Lita lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. For more information about Lita and her books, please visit www.litajudge.com.

K-Gr 3-Behind his extreme shyness and speech difficulties, Rothschild had a brilliant mind and endless fascination with exotic animals. When he was seven, he decided his goal was to create a museum filled with specimens of unusual creatures from around the world. Although his parents bought him kangaroos, kiwis, lizards, and other exotic animals, his father insisted that Walter enter his banking business when he became an adult. Using his salary and assets from his family's fortune, the young man financed collectors who traveled around the globe to locate unusual animals and ship the specimens back to England. By the time he was 24, his dream museum had become a reality. Over his lifetime, Rothschild named thousands of new species and published hundreds of scientific papers. He also kept many unusual animals on his estate, including the zebras he used to pull his carriage. Judge's picture-book biography of the shy genius may encourage readers to follow their own creative ideas, although few people possess the wealth of the Rothschilds. Watercolor paintings help readers visualize the Victorian era. An extensive author's note provides more details about the zoologist's life and explains how wildlife studies have changed since his time. The web addresses in the book for the Natural History Museum at Tring and the Natural History Museum, London, are incorrect. Although the unusual subject is handled adequately, this title is a supplemental purchase for most libraries.-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State University, Mankato (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.