I was reading Nasty Nature with my 3rd and 4th graders and was enjoying it with them. There were interesting facts about animals presented in very creative ways - comics, narratives, faux newspaper columns, awards etc, I was really appreciating the way Mr. Arnold communicates science in a kid friendly way, which is why I was sharing this book with my class in the first place - and why I was so disturbed by a snippet we came across on page 132. We were reading along about vultures and the conservation efforts of John Ledger, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa. Mr. Arnold was detailing Ledger's "vulture restaurants" which were designed to provide an adequate food source for the threatened vulture population, when we came to this paragraph: "And once there was even a human on the menu. Devoted vulture lover Mickey Lindbergh shot himself in 1987 at a vulture restaurant. His last acton Earth was to make sure his beloved vultures got fed. On his own dead body!" I was shocked to find such a cavalier and trivial reference to SUICIDE in a children's book! Does Mr. Arnold really think suicide is appropriate to joke about in children's literature? How many kids have read this and tacitly assumed that suicide is ok as long as it's in the name of animal conservation? Needless to say, my copy of this book is in the trash - too bad too because most of what Mr. Arnold presented was appealing and informative to the science-minded child. I'm just not willing to expose my students to his trivial presentation of such a serious issue in a book which is supposed to be kid-friendly.