From Publishers Weekly
At dawn, the electricity in the air warns buffalo of an impending storm. An eagle flies overhead; a prairie dog back flips to warn other prairie dogs about the eagle. Henry, camera in hand, wants to photograph the wildlife. Before the day is out, he will have survived a tornado that has killed animals and plants. That is life on the prairie, as related by Newbery Medalist George. Her lucid explanations of the ways the animals read signals and prepare for a storm are a primer in natural science; she chooses information with care, and maintains a simple storyline. Marstall's pictures add drama to a book that's perhaps not as immediately interesting as George's One Day in the Alpine Tundra and One Day in the Desert, perhaps because prairies are more familiar landscapes. Yet readers will newly understand the fragility and interrelationship of life forms. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6 As in her two previous books in this series, One Day in the Desert (1983) and One Day in the Alpine Tundra (1984, both Crowell) , George takes an ecological community, adds a child, and comes up with a story both factually accurate and exciting to read. Henry spends a day at a southwestern Oklahoma wildlife refuge to try to photograph a prairie dog doing a backflip (a warning signal to its kin). He doesn't know that a tornado is forming on the horizon, but the nearby buffalo herd senses its approach. With her usual skill, George describes the plants, the animals, and the insects of the prairie and their behavior as the storm approaches. Black-and-white pencil drawings expand the text and bring out the threat of the coming tornado. There is a bibliography of titles on more specific aspects of the prairie ecosystem and a short index. George provides a brief but intense and detailed look at the North American prairie, equally suitable for a homework assignment or for browsing. With the recent popularity of books on the history of the prairie, it is good to balance them with a look at its ecology and natural history. Ruth S. Vose, San Francisco Public LibraryCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Henry Rush is spending the day at the Prairie Wildlife Refuge, determined to photograph a prairie dog doing a back flip. But while he whatches and waites at the edge of prairie dog town, he fails to notice the electricity humming through the air. Or the buffalo aniously pawing the ground. Or the purple-blue cloud building over the prairie grass. A tornado is forming to the west . And when the dark funnel touches down, it will wipe out everything in it's path...
Card catalog description
The animals on a prairie wildlife refuge sense an approaching tornado and seek protection before it touches down and destroys everything in its path.
About the Author
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in a family of naturalists, Jean George has centered her life around writing and nature. She attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating with degrees in English and science. In the 1940s she was a member of the White House press corps and a reporter for the Washington Post. Ms. George, who has written over 90 books - among them My Side of the Mountain (Dutton), a 1960 Newbery Honor Book, and its sequels On the Far Side of the Mountain and Frightful's Mountain (both Dutton) - also hikes, canoes, and makes sourdough pancakes. In 1991, Ms. George became the first winner of the School Library Media Section of the New York Library Association's Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile Literature, which was presented to her for the "consistent superior quality" of her literary works.Her inspiration for the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves evolved from two specific events during a summer she spent studying wolves and tundra at the Arctic Research Laboratory of Barrow, Alaska: "One was a small girl walking the vast ad lonesome tundra outside of Barrow; the other was a magnificent alpha male wolf, leader of a pack in Denali National Park ... They haunted me for a year or more, as did the words of one of the scientists at the lab: 'If there ever was any doubt in my mind that a man could live with the wolves, it is gone now. The wolves are truly gentlemen, highly social and affectionate.'"The mother of three children, Jean George is a grandmother who has joyfully red to her grandchildren since they were born. Over the years Jean George has kept 173 pets, not including dogs and cats, in her home in Chappaqua, New York. "Most of these wild animals depart in autumn, when the sun changes their behavior and they feel the urge to migrate or go off alone. While they are with us, however, they become characters in my books, articles, and stories."
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