By Maria Gianferrari
A true, close-up look at one Atlantic puffin growing up on a busy Maine island, from egg to grown bird raising a chick of her own.
On a rocky island off the coast of Maine, an Atlantic puffin family is raising a puffling. We follow that one little bird as she hatches, eats, grows, and learns her way around a crowded, noisy island full of other puffins. Then she goes off to sea for years, the way real puffins do, and comes back at last to find a mate, dig a burrow, and hatch a puffling of her own. Maria Gianferrari keeps the science true while Maris Wicks fills every page with warm, clear, cartoon-bright birds.
It gives an animal-loving child real facts wrapped in a story they'll actually follow: one bird, cradle to grown-up, on a real island you could point to on a map. Wicks's art is bright and friendly enough for a preschooler but the information is solid enough that an older sibling learns something too. The full-circle ending, the puffling growing up to raise her own, gives the facts the satisfying shape of a story.