‘Cecil’s Pride’ and ‘Prairie Dog Song’

Photo Credit From "Cecil's Pride"

When a trophy-hunting American tourist killed Cecil the lion last year, the disturbing story gripped the public: He had been illegally lured out of the protected Zimbabwe game park where he lived by a rogue hunting guide. Cecil had been a favorite of safari tourists, whom he'd sometimes approach and even seem to pose for, and he was also a key part of a continuing Oxford University wildlife behavior study. His loss was crushing to many. But there is more to the story, as Craig, Juliana and Isabella Hatkoff recount in "Cecil's Pride," an enlightening book filled with stunning photos taken by one of the researchers who tracked Cecil.

The Hatkoffs are also the authors of the best seller "Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship" and of "Knut: How One Little Polar Bear Cap tivated the World." They have an eye for fascinating true tales of animal relationships. Written in direct, workmanlike language, their books don't romanticize animal behavior, even as they focus on those aspects that tug at human hearts. While Cecil's story does not feature cross-species bonding, as their other books do, an unusual connection lies at its core: Before his death, Cecil had forged a kinship with an unrelated male lion named Jericho — an extremely rare occurrence in the lion world. These two leaders joined forces, combining their families into one pride, when both were threatened by a pair of brothers intent on taking over their territory. After Cecil's death, the researchers worried that Jericho would kill Cecil's cubs. But Jericho — who emerges as the story's true hero —returned to the pride and raised Cecil's cubs as his own. In a book that ends with a note of alarm about the dire need for a ban on lion hunting, that's a remarkable happy ending , and more evidence for approaching wildlife with awe and respect, as there is always more to learn from and about them.

Photo Credit From "Prairie Dog Song"

There's an unexpectedly happy ending, too, to "Prairie Dog Song," which tells how this strange little North American species was wiped out of large swaths of the grasslands it once helped sustain. Prairie dogs are actually a kind of squirrel, and as the book explains, they are what's known as a "keystone species," one that helps other animals and plants in their ecosystem survive. The vast grasslands of North America don't get enough rain to sustain trees. But grasses can grow there with the help of prairie dogs, who for centuries made "cities" of burrows that benefited the soil and provided a home to other creatures like burrowing owls, snakes and spiders. Bison, which also improved the soil with their clomping, fed on the rich grasses, and golden eagles and ferrets fed on the prairie dogs, which once numbered in the billions.

The book's first part lays out this grassland ecosystem with a friendly song, meant to be sung to the tune of "The Green Grass Grows All Around." As each animal is introduced, prose set underneath the song's lyrics includes a concise, accessible scientific description of the role it played. But something interrupts the pattern: "And then one year/ Came ranchers and farmers / With the fattest cows / That you ever did see." The settlers destroy the prairie dogs' territory, covering it with houses and roads and putting poison in the burrows. The prairie dogs disappear, along with the bison and the ferrets. The mesquite trees the prairie dogs had kept in check by chewing the roots spread, draining the water and turning the area into desert. The authors then skip to recent years, when a conservation effort in northern Mexico has created a protected grassland reserve that is home to a grow ing population of prairie dogs and other grassland-dwellers. The song continues with the simple verses telling how this time "the people" — led, we learn below, by a scientist named Dr. Gerardo Ceballos — brought back each type of animal, rather than causing them to disappear.

The book's elements work together unusually well, with cumulative verses mirroring the interrelated nature of the grassland ecosystem without being simplistic or corny. Susan L. Roth's cheerful, intricate mixed-media collages, too, form a visual embodiment of the grassland's unity from diversity, their careful layers integrating in just the right way to seem vibrantly whole.

CECIL'S PRIDE

The True Story of a Lion King

By Craig Hatkoff, Juliana Hatkoff and Isabella Hatkoff

Photographs by Brent Stapelkamp

40 pp. Scholastic. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)

PRAIRIE DOG SONG

The Key to Saving North America's Grasslands

Written by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore

Illustrated by Susan L. Roth

40 pp. Lee & Low Books. $18.95. (Picture book; ages 5 to 10)

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