Howl Like a Wolf

plus bird-watching, going reef-safe, and a favorite recipe for surplus strawberries

This week my friend Kathleen Yale, an editor at Orion magazine who also spent a decade as a wildlife field biologist, sent the girls a copy of her book, Howl Like a Wolf!, which introduces and explains the distinctive behaviors of fifteen amazing animals, along with two other books she worked on at Storey Press: Beach Walk and Bug Hunt. Bea and Harriet are always excited to get packages (they regularly get a “box of chaos” from their grandparents, and Harriet also gets books from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library), but they were especially excited to see these books. Harriet has been talking nonstop about the beach since we went in May, and Beatrice is an avid collector of animal facts.

For my part, I love books that encourage activity while also teaching useful lessons, and I think that all three would be great additions to a personal or classroom library. . Beach Walk and Bug Hunt are a nice backpack size, also full of facts, and both come with working magnifying glasses. Howl Like a Wolf! would be an excellent science lesson read-aloud, and it includes so many fun games and activities we’re excited to try—perfect for summer.

From Bea:

“Howl Like a Wolf! is really good for curious young people—I love reading it to Harriet. It has many interesting facts and activities about animals. For example, with the skunk, you get to design a defensive dance. It teaches you not just about the skunk, but also other animals who spray.”

Another thing I love: Beach Walk just off-handedly mentions reef-safe sunscreen—so important! (Have you made the switch? 14,000 tons of sunscreen enter the ocean every year—howisthatevenpossible—and the kind with oxybenzone and octinoxate kill coral. Any favorite brands? Supergoop, which we use, is 20% off right now.)

Wolf-related: My friend Meaghan Mulholland published this terrific, hopeful article about the release of eight endangered red wolves in a North Carolina wildlife refuge for National Geographic. It’s great to read with kids as well (do you read “adult” articles with your kids? I find they often have much more engaging details, and usually aren’t that much harder for kids to understand).

Another book to be excited about:

We Have a Dream, by Mya-Rose Craig: Mya-Rose is a young ornithologist who became famous as a 7-year-old British Bangladeshi birder, and went on to found a camp called Black2Nature, an organization that engages visible minority kids in nature (she founded this group after noticing that she was often the only visible minority out birdwatching). We Have a Dream is about young environmental activists of color, from all over the world, and it comes out in August in the UK. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a copy! In the meantime, Bea and I enjoyed this excerpt from the BBC documentary Twitchers, which features Mya-Rose:

As Bea pointed out, it was crazy for adults to doubt Mya-Rose’s birdwatching skills: “Kids have much sharper eyesight than adults.”

Finally, as we wind down strawberry season in our part of North Carolina, I thought I’d share our two favorite things to do with strawberries (besides take a bite, then leave the hull on the rug—that would be Harriet). Both recipes use buttermilk, which we get from Maple View Farm and which, as a maker of biscuits and cornbread, I always have in the fridge.

Strawberry Milk (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

(You might have memories of strawberry milk from school lunches or gas stations, but this is not like that. It’s more like a light, delicious milkshake—with a little tang, like a lassi. The girls love it as a breakfast drink or any time of day.)

Ingredients:

One pound hulled strawberries

½ cup sugar

1 cup of buttermilk (we prefer full-fat, local buttermilk in the glass jar)

3 cups of whole milk (or whatever kind of milk you like)

Directions:

1. Chop the strawberries—a good activity for a kid if you have Montessori knives. Put them in a large bowl and sprinkle the sugar on top. Leave them for about 30 minutes to an hour, when they’ll be softened and syrupy.

2. Stir a cup of buttermilk into the strawberries, then blend with an immersion blender (or in a regular blender). Blend well!

3. Add three cups of whole milk to the buttermilk-strawberry mixture, stir, then funnel it into an extra-large Mason jar (or split between two). Put the lid on, screw it tight, and shake it up!

Chill, then pour into glasses and enjoy with a paper straw.

We also love Andrea Reusing’s strawberry buttermilk ice cream.

Any special plans to get outside this weekend? We’ve had some much-needed rain and are hoping to start to see mushrooms in the woods soon…