Adventures of Rusty & Ginger Fox – GIVEAWAY

Description: Join Rusty and Ginger as they travel through the woods. Author Tim Ostermeyer’s beautiful wildlife photography provides a fox’s-eye view of the forest. With a charming story to guide the way, and a fact page of wildlife information for every animal introduced in the book, readers can explore nature alongside Rusty and Ginger.

Ages 4-8
Publisher: Synergy Books
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-09845040-0-8

Review: Adventures of Rusty & Ginger Fox is a collection of lovely photographs, a sweet story that will appeal to young children, and accompanying animal fact boxes.

This book has of a non-fiction/factual feel to it the first half but toward the end, human children are introduced and the story takes on more of a fairy tale feel. This makes the overall story fun and educational at the same time. To supplement the story there are also facts about each animal the young foxes encounter, including the humans! One of my favorite features are the matching animal tracts included along side each animal fact box.

The humans in the story are portrayed positively; they “are smart and can be very helpful” according to Mom fox. It’s a nice change of pace to see humans as caring and trusted beings in a nature story because I truly believe most of us are thoughtful creatures. I also believe most of us aspire to raise our children to be conscientious global citizens. However, at the same time, it’s very true that foxes should be wary of humans. For time unknown, we’ve hunted them for sport and their fur or treated them as pests. However, this fox family is blissfully unaware these facts. Maybe that’s for the best, but for older children this presents an opportunity for further discussion. You may particularly want to talk about why we shouldn’t play with wild animals.

Overall, the book has grown on me and it’s earned a spot in our personal home library. As my son (almost 2) matures I can see us returning to this book again. For now, we had fun looking at the pictures and learning the names of new animals and also pointing out their ears, eyes, noses, mouths, teeth, feet, tails, etc.

Ostermeyer is publishing a series of children’s books and the next one set to be released is Snowball’s Antarctic Adventures. It should be available in the coming weeks.

Q & A with Tim Ostermeyer:

Can you tell us about your books?

There are thousands of children books with illustrative drawings and paintings, but not enough real wildlife books that children could perfectly visualize wild baby animals and enjoy them in their natural habitat. I decided to create the Fun Adventure Wildlife Books series for children so they could “ooh” and “aah” at the baby wildlife photographs, smile and laugh at the storyline, learn and share information from the fact boxes (10 facts of each animal), and end with a lesson and moral to benefit them in every day life.

In your books, you feature baby penguins, polar bears, foxes, tigers and many more animals. Which was the hardest to capture on film for the book, and why?

The baby penguins were the easiest, because they have never been endangered in Antarctica, do not fear man, and would walk right up to me to check me out. The adult tiger, lion and cougars were the most dangerous, because they could have attacked me if they wanted. The walrus in the polar bear book were the hardest to find (had to go to the Arctic in Norway).

Besides reading your books, what are 5 things moms and dads can do to get their kids outside to learn—and have fun—in nature?

1. A local zoo is great. But a petting or interactive zoo is even better for little ones – check out your local science center or tourism online sites for the ones nearest you.
2. When you take a family vacation, research ahead to find a park or zoo that has wildlife indigenous to that area – animals your kids wouldn’t get to see otherwise.
3. Try camping on your next trip, or evening in your backyard! Help your kids identify the various wildlife noises they hear throughout the evening, point out the moon and stars and watch the sun set and the sun rise!
4. Give your kids their own disposable camera and encourage them to take pictures of the living things they see, and make a scrapbook including notes about what they know of each animal or bug they capture on film.
5. On a rainy day take them to a museum and work with them on identifying wildlife in the exhibits.

What was your favorite book as a child?

Dr. Seuss books always were very creative to me. In my Fun Adventure Wildlife Book series, I try to use my creativity to obtain a fun adventurous book using realistic wildlife photography showing baby wildlife in their natural habitat.

Can we get a sneak peek of the next books in your fun adventure wildlife series?

I went to Japan three times (spring, fall and winter) to photograph baby Japanese Snow Monkeys growing up in the Japanese Alps. Since I have a book from India & Africa (baby tigers), Antarctica (baby penguins), Canada & Arctic (baby polar bears), North America (baby foxes) and I have a Japanese book coming (baby snow monkeys), I thought it would be nice to go down under to photograph and write a book from Australia (baby kangaroos).

DIRECTIONS TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY for a copy of Adventures of Rusty & Ginger Fox

Mandatory Entry: Share what your favorite wild animal is and if you’ve ever seen one in real life or had the opportunity to photograph one.

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Prize will be mailed direct from JKSCommunications, the literary publicity firm who provided me with a review copy to facilitate this review and giveaway.