The Hyena Scientist by Sy Montgomery

The Hyena Scientist takes readers on safari to observe a misunderstood species.  Ages 8-14

The Hyena Scientist by Sy Montgomery, photography by Nic Bishop.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018, 71 pages including index.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 8-14

Hyenas get a bad rap as vicious scavengers, grave-robbers, and cowardly thieves.  Most children know them as the skulking trio headed by Whoopi Goldberg in The Lion King.  Kay Holecamp has spent years observing, analyzing, tracking, and probing hyenas, and she can assure young readers that none of that scuzzy reputation is true.  For most of the year, she’s a professor at Michigan State University, but every summer she’s in the Masai Mara territory of Western Kenya studying the animals she’s come to love.  Hyenas, we quickly learn, are the only mammalian species in which females are dominant: bigger, fiercer, and smarter.  The animals’ social intelligence is remarkable and their memory for human faces unsurpassed.  Far from mere scavengers, after lions hyenas are the most prolific hunters on the African plain.  Even their famous “laughter” is misunderstood, for hyenas possess a wide range of articulation that humans are only beginning to penetrate.

In this latest volume of the “Scientists in the Field” series, author Sy Montgomery and photographer Nic Bishop share all the burdens and joys of Professor Holecamp and her team—eating what they eat, showering where they shower (a seven-step process), sleeping where they sleep, and following the same daily routine of observation and data gathering.  In between, they’re avoiding deadly snakes and cleaning up after floods.  We gave high praise to the author’s Amazon Adventure last year.  Like that book, this one sticks to the subject, doesn’t delve into political ideology, and makes few references to evolution.  Kids who are considering a career in science, particularly field research, should devour these books.

Cautions: Worldview (one brief mention of Kay Holecamp marrying her best friend, another woman)

Overall rating: 3.75 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic value: 4.25