About this item
From the award-winning author of Song for a Whale comes a poignant and heartwarming tale about a girl who discovers a pair of endangered birds about to lay eggs in the marshes of her summer camp...and the secret plan she hatches to help them.. Nina is used to feeling like the odd one out, both at school and in her large family. But while trying to fit in at summer camp, she discovers something even more peculiar: two majestic birds have built a nest in the marsh behind an abandoned infirmary. They appear to be whooping cranes, but that's impossible - Nina is an amateur bird-watcher, and all her resources tell her that those rare birds haven't nested in Texas for over a hundred years.. When Nina reports the sighting to wildlife officials, more questions arise.
About the Author
I am a science writer fascinated by just how much the human brain can memorise - and it's a huge amount if you know the methods. My most recent book, 'Memory Craft', is the result of years of experimenting with a vast range of memory techniques and the way you can implement them in contemporary life to memorise almost anything and keep your brain active.My PhD explored the way indigenous cultures encode knowledge without writing, especially the pragmatic stuff - animals, plants, medical knowledge including a pharmacopoeia, laws, navigation, genealogy, history, land and resource rights plus all sorts of ethical metaphors. I then realised that this understanding offered a new theory on the purpose of Stonehenge and many other archaeological sites.'The Memory Code' tells the story of these extraordinary memory methods for the non-academic reader. The memory methods draw from Australian, Native American, Pacific and African cultures. The new theory explains the pragmatic purpose of Stonehenge and Avebury in England, Orkney in Scotland, Carnac in France and Newgrange in Ireland, Chaco Canyon in the US, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the Nasca Lines in Peru among many others.Cambridge University Press has published the academic version, "Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies" giving a solid peer-reviewed academic reasoning for my ideas. Writing dominates my life. I started with educational books - 10 of them - logical because I was a teacher. I wrote a novel, "Avenging Janie" and then three popular science books published in Australia, the US and UK: "The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal", "Crocodile: evolution's greatest survivor", and "Spiders: learning to love them". I overcame my arachnophobia a bit too well and now I am obsessed by spiders. I simply adore the gorgeous critters.But it will be memory systems which will dominate my writing for many years to come. I simply love the stuff!
