A peak into In Search of Lost Frogs

This is a beautiful book!  I saw it on the new shelf in the library when I was picking up some of the books nominated for the Cybils and despite my promise not to acquire non-Cybils books, I had to borrow it.

To be clear, it isn't a elementary/middle grade book. I suppose it might be considered young adult non-fiction book (not sure how to tell honestly) or simply a good introduction for any layperson to an important topic.

So ... for Book Beginnings on Friday, hosted by Rose City Reader here is something from the beginning of In Search of Lost Frogs: The Quest to Find the World's Rarest Amphibians by Robin Moore ...
 

Prologue

On a late September day in 2007, three miles above the equator in southern Ecuador, I joined a team of scientists on a quest to find a small black frog. We hiked across windswept peaks under cotton-wool clouds billowing in a sapphire sky - the air so thin that it made my head pound and my lungs ache - in search of a creature no bigger than my thumb. The frog had not been seen in two decades; its disappearance had been as sudden as it was mysterious. The frog was posthumously named after the Quechua word for sadness, to lament the loss of frogs from cool streams and glassy pools across South America and beyond.

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For The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice here is something from page 56 from In Search of Lost Frogs ...

A third of known amphibian species were threatened with extinction - a further quarter were too little known to assesses, and 120 species were believed to have gone extinct since 1980. "It was much worse than we expected," said Simon Stuart, who led the project. While the main threats to amphibians were identified as habitat loss, disease, pollution and invasive species, a large category of rapid declines - affecting some 453 species - were classified as "enigmatic." Although disease and climate change were implicated and interactions between the two suspected, the exact mechanism behind these declines had not been pinpointed. 


And as a bonus,  here is a small bit of page 111 ...

Other than this, our encounters with teenagers in camouflage are brief and cordial. On one occasion, as we are photographing frogs beside a stream, I look up to see Alonso standing beside a young man with an AK-47. The soldier is focused on something in Alonso's hands and, as I more closer, I see it is a frog. The soldier is enraptured by Alonso's descriptions of the frog and why they are important components of the ecosystem.


The book has a website too  ... http://insearchoflostfrogs.com and there are amazing images there!  Go visit! 

 For example, here is a really tiny new toad which has been named the "Monty Burns Toad"...

A new species of beaked toad found in the Choco of Colombia.
Copyright Robin Moore

This is a very cool book !