A Shorebird Flying Adventure

By Jackie Kerin and Milly Formby, CSIRO Publishing (Australia)

Jackie and Milly are very excited to announce that the book, A Shorebird Flying Adventure, will be released in June 2022. Jackie has written the text and Milly has created the illustrations. The aim was to make an engaging and informative book for mid to upper primary school readers and their teachers.

In A Shorebird Flying Adventure, Milly invites you to hop into her microlight and travel around the world to discover how amazing and awesome migratory shorebirds are. On the way you will meet the brilliant birds who travel phenomenal distances every year and explore their precious wetland habitats and breeding grounds. You will also discover fascinating facts about their diet and find out top tips to tell one species from another. In the illustrations, you will find over thirty birds (not all migratory shorebirds), wetland diagrams and maps. You will also see children calling out in languages from across the flyway including Chinese, Korean, Russian, Japanese and Thai, which in six languages!

Additional resources

For educators, there are free downloadable resources on the Wing Threads website.
• E-leaning pack
• Teacher notes
• Cartoon shorebird ID activity
• Live shorebird tracking reports

The Flight Around OZ

Milly will be taking off in her microlight on a real flying adventure around Australia in mid-2022. On the way, she will be visiting schools, libraries and wetland centres and spreading the shorebird word. Milly invites you all, wherever you are on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, to follow along and learn together. Let’s tell everyone why shorebirds are totally awesome!

Pre-order A Shorebird Flying Adventure and follow my Flight Around OZ

Wing Threads [https://wingthreads.com/]
CSIRO Publishing [https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/8006/]

How the book came to be – in words of Milly Formby

“Jackie and I love birds – especially migratory shorebirds, so our paths were destined to cross one day.

It was 2018, at the Australasian Shorebird Conference in Tasmania. I’d just presented on Wing Threads and Flight Around Oz - my project to fly around Australia in my microlight to raise awareness for migratory shorebirds, and Jackie was in the audience.

She approached me afterwards, very excited by my presentation and suggested that my adventure would make a great picture book for children. However, at the time I was pretty busy training and making plans and anyway - what did I know about publishing and creating books for children?

Less than a year later, at the Australasian Ornithological Conference in Darwin, I was approached again, this time by CSIRO Publishing! Okay so this idea wasn’t going away and now it had legs.

To cut a long story short (you’d be amazed how much work it is to write and illustrate a 32 page illustrated book), with the support of CSIRO, Jackie and I set to work.

To the people who work so hard to create conferences – thank you. Wonderful, unexpected projects can hatch around the cakes at morning tea time.

Cheers to all our Flyway Friends”

Milly Formby

Pilot, zoologist, illustrator and bird nerd!

Follow her amazing journey around Australia at Wing Threads

Jackie Kerin is the author of several award-winning non-fiction illustrated books for children as well as a storyteller.

Follow her channel: https://www.jackiekerin.com.au/

Wing Threads acknowledges the support of the EAAFP and the Small Grant Fund.

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