RE: emu history

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@rogers.com>]

At 08:27 AM 1/14/2004, Nancy Cavanaugh wrote:

> Unfortunately, in my neck of northern NJ there is very little to no
> books about emu, ratites, etc. I suppose I could head into NYC and see
> if their library has something but being a single mom with a full-time
> job makes doing something like that a bit more difficult. Not
> impossible, just more difficult.

I can certainly understand this.  However, given that this is the situation 
I would still strongly recommend that you check out the books I mentioned 
to you.  The best place to do this in New York City would certainly be the 
Museum Library at the American Museum of Natural History; certainly the 
Department of Ornithology will have all the books that I mentioned, and you 
could have a chat with Joel at the same time!  Obviously you have to 
arrange this in advance, but I think it would be very much worth your 
while.  In a pinch you might see if they could photocopy the relevant pages 
for you and send them to you, though this might be quite a bit to ask.

You might look at http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au/actionplan/extinct.html, 
which leads you to brief technical accounts of the extinct emus of King and 
Kangaroo Islands.


> I suppose I should clarify my book project. The book I am writing is
> going to be for kids and articles, I hope, for places like the AEA who
> seem to really be lacking in any information beyond how to farm the
> birds. Getting this in-depth about them is just a personal thing I'm
> interested in. I highly doubt most 8 year olds would be interested in
> learning about the species to this level. I saw a discrepancy in the
> dates and was curious about it so I started asking around and figured
> this place would be one of the best places to go for possible answers.

I can understand this, and I am not trying to be difficult.  However, I am 
the author of three children's books on science myself, and I have always 
found that I end up doing far more research than actually goes into the 
book.  For my last book for children, a book about newly-discovered animal 
species, I spent almost two years gathering material and preparing the 
text, though the final result was only 64 pages long, including 
pictures.  I read a great number of original scientific papers, and 
contacted as many of the original discoverers of the species as I could to 
ask questions and to have them look at what I had written.  I am not trying 
to pat myself on the back about this; I simply do not think I could have 
turned out a book that I would've been willing to put my name to had I done 
less.  You are in an easier position, as most of the material you need has 
probably already been gathered into books rather than ending up in 
scattered scientific papers and articles.

Children, even the youngest children, have the right to accurate 
information (obviously presented at a level they can understand), and to 
provide that I have to do enough in-depth research for my own edification 
to be able to be sure that what I eventually write is not only factually 
correct, but that I have learned enough to put that material into the 
proper context, and interpret it in the right way.  The trouble with 
material on the Internet is that anyone can put anything they like out 
there, whether they know what they are talking about or not.  In science, 
there is really no substitute for going to the primary literature, or at 
least to widely-accepted monographs that cite for references, even if the 
information you get out of them is far too complicated to be presented to 
children in an undigested lump.


--
Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
1825 Shady Creek Court
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2          mailto:ornstn@rogers.com