Riparia's River

Michael J. Caduto is an author, ecologist, storyteller, and musician who presents programs and performances to children of all ages around the world. In addition to being the only environmentalist who has ever used CPR to save a chipmunk's life, he is well known as the creator and co-author of the international best-selling Keepers of the Earth series, Native American Gardening, and Pond and Brook: A Guide to Nature in Freshwater Environments. Olga Pastuchiv is a children's book author, painter, and commercial illustrator. Whether working on a fishing boat in Greece or as a landscape gardener in New England, Olga is always painting. She paints things large and small, from murals and parade floats to illustrations for several poetry and botany collections and a cookbook. Her picture book Minas and the Fish (Houghton Mifflin, 1989) is about a fisherman's boy she met on Karpathos Island. Olga lives in Maine with two cats.

"Children organize to clean up an algae-slimed swimming hole...The well-meaning text concentrates more on delivering message and information than telling a story, but Pastuchiv offers readers plenty to discover for themselves in her impressionistic paintings. Each river scene is generously populated with dozens of identifiable birds, insects and other wildlife—all listed at the end, though without a visual key."