What a job Matt Patterson did with the illustrations. He knows his fish and he knows his art. The illustrations are absolutely splendid: accurately rendered and artistically striking. Moreover, the book’s designer created a handsome blend of art and text, and in places, even creates the appearance of fish migrating through the book. If you’re a serious fisher in the Northeast, or if serious anglers come to visit, this is a book you’ll want lying on the coffee table.
Sy Mongomery
Sy Montgomery is a lifelong explorer: she has made four trips to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon; and on other expeditions, she was chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire; bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica; undressed by an orangutan in Borneo; and hunted by a tiger in India. She also worked in a pit crawling with eighteen thousand snakes in Manitoba; handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana; and swam with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon.
She has collaborated for years with photographer Nic Bishop, and together they launched Houghton Mifflin’s award-winning “Scientists in the Field” series with The Snake Scientist, published in 1999. This series takes young readers into the fascinating world of scientists whose “laboratories” are in the wild, often in some of the most remote corners of the world.
Sy has written more than 15 books for both adults and children. The Good, Good Pig, a moving memoir of life with her remarkable pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller. Her book for children, Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea was the recipient of the 2007 Orbis Pictus Award and was selected as an Honor book for the ALA Sibert Award. In April 2010, she was awarded the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, D.C.’s Nonfiction Award for her distinguished body of work.
She is a 1979 graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in journalism, French, and psychology. She lives in Hancock New Hampshire with her husband, and of course, lots of animal friends.
