A full-color children's picture book with educational information celebrating the abundance of salamanders in the Southern Appalachian region.
 
This picture book and poem (350 words) highlight salamanders as a group and specifically name all the salamanders that can be found in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (32 at last count)—most are also found in the surrounding region. From the monstrous hellbender to the tiny Pygmy salamander, the temperate rainforest provides an incredible habitat for herpetological wonders. Author Diane Lang brings her knowledge of animals to life alongside illustrations by Katy Tanis. A must-read for young readers who are interested in salamanders, snakes, lizards, and other amphibians.
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Diane Lang has been educating children and adults about the natural world for a quarter of a century throughout her home state of California, where she volunteers at a local nature center. As an author of six picture books about nature, she especially likes to share the fascinating characteristics of oft-overlooked wild neighbors, such as turkey vultures, snakes, and spiders. She shares her home with her husband, who is an origami artist, two dogs, a desert tortoise, a Kenyan sand boa, and a Nicaraguan curly-haired tarantula. See some her favorites critters and a few of her poems at DianeLang.net. She resides in Pasadena, California.
Katy Tanis shares her passion for ecology through books, puzzles, games, fabrics, art shows, and science workshops. She has traveled around the world to find lemurs in Madagascar’s spiny forest, “flying dragons” in Borneo’s tropical forests, and sea otters in California’s kelp forests. She has had her feet kissed by a sea lion in Peru, been pooped on by an orangutan in Borneo, and woken up with a tarantula in her bed in Nicaragua. Katy is the author and illustrator of the popular Love in the Wild series. She resides on the New Jersey shore.