YOSEMITE'S SONGSTER

A tender story of separation and return celebrates Yosemite National Park and its coyotes.

After a frightening avalanche separates a coyote pair one spring morning, the female heads home to spend a lonely 36 hours without her mate before they are finally reunited. Wadsworth’s lyrical text provides a word-picture of the park’s cabins and campgrounds, its sights and sounds, and the coyote’s daily routine. She checks the trash cans, hunts for mice and squirrels, rests and waits. Finally, when she howls in the evening, her mate returns her call. The text respects these animals’ wildness, with no attribution of human characteristics (although readers and listeners will surely imagine their emotions). A concluding author’s note explains more about coyotes in the park and around the country. San Souci’s painterly watercolors are set in frames opposite the text except at the beginning and end, where the pair enter and leave their story in full-bleed images. He includes other creatures mentioned: a great horned owl, a pair of skunks and, of course, the human visitors. And he shows some of Yosemite’s famed natural splendors: Mirror Lake, the Merced River, Half Dome and El Capitan.

Published by the park’s conservancy, this satisfying story will make an appealing souvenir and can also serve as an introduction to a common but not well-loved species.