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Science Comics
Birds of Prey: Terrifying Talons
Spread your wings with Science Comics: Birds of Prey, a new and exciting volume of First Second's nonfiction graphic novel series!
Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, robots, and more. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty-year-old with a secret passion for airplanes, these graphic novels are for you!
In this volume, you'll get up-close and personal with some of the world’s most skilled hunters, from the majestic eagle to the oft-maligned scavenger vulture! Armed with razor-sharp claws, keen eyesight, powerful wings, and killer instincts, these stealthy predators can make a meal of rodents, fish, snakes, lizards, monkeys, and even kangaroos! Discover how these amazing birds who are often at the top of the food chain, play an integral role in many different ecosystems around the world.
Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, robots, and more. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty-year-old with a secret passion for airplanes, these graphic novels are for you!
In this volume, you'll get up-close and personal with some of the world’s most skilled hunters, from the majestic eagle to the oft-maligned scavenger vulture! Armed with razor-sharp claws, keen eyesight, powerful wings, and killer instincts, these stealthy predators can make a meal of rodents, fish, snakes, lizards, monkeys, and even kangaroos! Discover how these amazing birds who are often at the top of the food chain, play an integral role in many different ecosystems around the world.
128 pages, Hardcover
Published May 17, 2022
6 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
Joe Flood
67 books11 followersJoe Flood is a comic book author and illustrator whose work includes the Cellies series, The Cute Girl Network, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and Orcs: Forged for War. For the Science Comics series, he collaborated with author MK Reed on Dinosaurs: Fossils and Feathers and wrote and illustrated Sharks: Nature’s Perfect Hunter. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York’s Hudson Valley.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
October 14, 2023
The illustrations were engaging and made it fun to learn about.
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August 31, 2023How? Grabbed at the library to continue our Science Comics read-a-thon. (Also from the library: a lot of Elephant and Piggie books.)
What? A squirrel meets a falconer at a Ren Faire, and together, they take a tour of birds of prey: what they are, how they work anatomically, what the family of birds looks like all the way back to T Rex, how they hunt (there's literally 20+ pages about different raptor species and how they hunt, including the death of Aeschylus, iykyk), migration + mating, threats to the species (including hunting and DDT -- this book has got lots of corpses, bird and other, and a few pages on falconry.
But get this: the final few pages are our friendly falconer telling the squirrel that he'll give him a 3-second headstart to run away from his hawk. So after a whole book of the three of them traveling through time and space, the final image is a squirrel running to a forest that he'll never make, with the shadow of a hawk overhead.
Yeah, so? The 6yo seemed to like it, and I liked it, but hoo boy, it's grisly at times and the end is a real sick moment that I'm still reeling from. Anyway, I've read a few now, and here's a quick breakdown of science comics:
a) comics with a strong narrative throughline, like the Periodic Table (where a person is on a fantasy adventure) and Volcanoes (where post-apoc people search for fuel)
b) comics without a narrative -- so, Dogs and Birds of Prey. (Digestive System actually is sort of a bridge. It's mostly non-narrative, being just a tour of the guts, but there's an occasional narrative about our tour guide E who keeps budding.)
So why does this book work for me when the similarly non-narrative Bridges didn't, especially since both do a lot of touring? I think it's partly the way this book is structured: there's defined chunks of information, but they lead into each other nicely, building on what came before. (Raptors are highly specialized killing machines (anatomy). How so? Cue segment on evolution.) The lightly personalized part -- with our tour guide -- are also nicely contained and clear: our falconer loves birds, our squirrel is constantly undercutting them. (Whereas the four guides to Bridges were less defined and had less time to define themselves.)
What? A squirrel meets a falconer at a Ren Faire, and together, they take a tour of birds of prey: what they are, how they work anatomically, what the family of birds looks like all the way back to T Rex, how they hunt (there's literally 20+ pages about different raptor species and how they hunt, including the death of Aeschylus, iykyk), migration + mating, threats to the species (including hunting and DDT -- this book has got lots of corpses, bird and other, and a few pages on falconry.
But get this: the final few pages are our friendly falconer telling the squirrel that he'll give him a 3-second headstart to run away from his hawk. So after a whole book of the three of them traveling through time and space, the final image is a squirrel running to a forest that he'll never make, with the shadow of a hawk overhead.
Yeah, so? The 6yo seemed to like it, and I liked it, but hoo boy, it's grisly at times and the end is a real sick moment that I'm still reeling from. Anyway, I've read a few now, and here's a quick breakdown of science comics:
a) comics with a strong narrative throughline, like the Periodic Table (where a person is on a fantasy adventure) and Volcanoes (where post-apoc people search for fuel)
b) comics without a narrative -- so, Dogs and Birds of Prey. (Digestive System actually is sort of a bridge. It's mostly non-narrative, being just a tour of the guts, but there's an occasional narrative about our tour guide E who keeps budding.)
So why does this book work for me when the similarly non-narrative Bridges didn't, especially since both do a lot of touring? I think it's partly the way this book is structured: there's defined chunks of information, but they lead into each other nicely, building on what came before. (Raptors are highly specialized killing machines (anatomy). How so? Cue segment on evolution.) The lightly personalized part -- with our tour guide -- are also nicely contained and clear: our falconer loves birds, our squirrel is constantly undercutting them. (Whereas the four guides to Bridges were less defined and had less time to define themselves.)
September 24, 2023
This is another graphic novel in the kids’ series “Science Comics”. This one focused on diurnal raptors/birds of prey (owls are also raptors, but they are nocturnal, so are not included in this book). Some things described in the book include their various body parts, what they hunt and how, how they fly, mating, and loss of habitat and human threats (like DDT, which of course, was banned in the early 70s), and probably more I’m forgetting at this moment.
These are so good with so much information. I’ll never remember even half of it probably, but it’s done so well, and the (colour) illustrations are beautiful. Even simple things I probably should have known like what characteristics distinguish a raptor. It was interesting to see the close-up illustrations of the birds, like their beaks and talons to distinguish, as I am never likely to see that in person! I am enjoying this entire series so much.
These are so good with so much information. I’ll never remember even half of it probably, but it’s done so well, and the (colour) illustrations are beautiful. Even simple things I probably should have known like what characteristics distinguish a raptor. It was interesting to see the close-up illustrations of the birds, like their beaks and talons to distinguish, as I am never likely to see that in person! I am enjoying this entire series so much.
June 21, 2025
Very fun book! I loved learning about birds of prey!
April 1, 2023
This book is very informative about raptors. However, if you have a child who loves small animals, be warned that there are a lot of panels of raptors catching and eating cute little animals and birds. While this is accurate, and the author explains that it is an important function of raptors to keep populations of small animals in balance (and all animals need to eat), it was a little too much for my child.
August 21, 2022
Less cohesive than the other entries I've read in the series (Cats and Dogs, both by Andy Hirsch), as we don't really have a single narrator carrying us through the story. There's a falconer from a Ren Faire who kind of leads the way, who has as semi-sidekicks a goshawk and a squirrel. Audubon and other bird experts (including the founder of Hawk Mountain, which was fun for me, since my family has been vacationing in that area since I was little!) speak up as well, but as a result there isn't really a single, flowing narrative.
Oh, and don't get too attached to that squirrel--in the last pages, our Ren Faire guy gives him a head start before setting the goshawk after it, and the final page shows the bird closing in, talons extended! And in addition to the ripping of flesh that you'd expect from a book about predators, there's one panel showing the inside of a piece of prey, where a talon punctures the skin while a heart, liver, and set of lungs drawn with eyes cower in fear.
There are also a couple unexplained references, like one to Newton's Third Law when explaining how wind moves over wings. What's Newton's Third Law? What does it mean? The audience might not know that. Heck, I've forgotten which of Newton's laws the third one is. (From Wikipedia: "If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.")
Still, what the book lacks in cohesion it makes up for in cool facts, like:
>> Birds' bones aren't nearly hollow to reduce body weight--they actually have air sacs that help the lungs during flight, which isn't exactly easy. As Flood puts it, "During the strenuous activity of flying, the air sacs act as bellows that continuously bring oxygen into the lungs, cooling the bird's body as well."
>> Once an osprey has caught a fish, they point its head forward to reduce wind drag.
>> Australia's wedge-tailed eagles will work in pairs to hunt kangaroos. Flippin' kangaroos!
>> Extinct species argentavis magnificens had a wingspan of almost 23 fee5!
>> The largest ever eagle by bodyweight, Haast's eagle, lived in New Zealand but died off with the arrival of the Maori, who hunted its main prey, the huge and flightless moa, to extinction.
There are also some great, funny pictures: pizza rat makes an appearance, and when our narrator and his sidekicks visit the lab, all three of them don protective gear, including full-body suits, botties on paws and talons, and masks.
So: fun, informative, but not quite as coherent as Hirsch's entries.
Oh, and don't get too attached to that squirrel--in the last pages, our Ren Faire guy gives him a head start before setting the goshawk after it, and the final page shows the bird closing in, talons extended! And in addition to the ripping of flesh that you'd expect from a book about predators, there's one panel showing the inside of a piece of prey, where a talon punctures the skin while a heart, liver, and set of lungs drawn with eyes cower in fear.
There are also a couple unexplained references, like one to Newton's Third Law when explaining how wind moves over wings. What's Newton's Third Law? What does it mean? The audience might not know that. Heck, I've forgotten which of Newton's laws the third one is. (From Wikipedia: "If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.")
Still, what the book lacks in cohesion it makes up for in cool facts, like:
>> Birds' bones aren't nearly hollow to reduce body weight--they actually have air sacs that help the lungs during flight, which isn't exactly easy. As Flood puts it, "During the strenuous activity of flying, the air sacs act as bellows that continuously bring oxygen into the lungs, cooling the bird's body as well."
>> Once an osprey has caught a fish, they point its head forward to reduce wind drag.
>> Australia's wedge-tailed eagles will work in pairs to hunt kangaroos. Flippin' kangaroos!
>> Extinct species argentavis magnificens had a wingspan of almost 23 fee5!
>> The largest ever eagle by bodyweight, Haast's eagle, lived in New Zealand but died off with the arrival of the Maori, who hunted its main prey, the huge and flightless moa, to extinction.
There are also some great, funny pictures: pizza rat makes an appearance, and when our narrator and his sidekicks visit the lab, all three of them don protective gear, including full-body suits, botties on paws and talons, and masks.
So: fun, informative, but not quite as coherent as Hirsch's entries.
November 3, 2021
Birds of Prey: Terrifying Talons is a captivating nonfiction graphic novel that gives a detailed overview of raptors through time, the history of their scientific study, biology, and how they fit into the ecosystem of the world. I loved that this Science Comic imparted a deeper understanding of raptors with dozens of fascinating facts. Science Comics always teach me something new and I just geeked out at family dinner telling my kids and husband all my favorite new diurnal raptor facts.
Birds of Prey is a great addition to the Science Comics series, all of which are enticing books for reluctant readers. I’ve volunteered with kids who are daunted and overwhelmed by chapter books, graphic novels end up being a great option to get them reading. Not having dense text and being able to turn pages more quickly has helped build confidence and excitement to read. The Science Comics series is the perfect recommendation for reluctant readers and kids who enjoy nonfiction.
Birds of Prey is a great addition to the Science Comics series, all of which are enticing books for reluctant readers. I’ve volunteered with kids who are daunted and overwhelmed by chapter books, graphic novels end up being a great option to get them reading. Not having dense text and being able to turn pages more quickly has helped build confidence and excitement to read. The Science Comics series is the perfect recommendation for reluctant readers and kids who enjoy nonfiction.
October 25, 2023
A graphic novel introduction to the characteristics, different subgroups of birds of prey, and how birds of prey have been used in falconry for centuries.
An engaging and informative look at birds of prey. I like that the illustrations are detailed enough you can identify the different birds in real life from looking at the pictures in here.
Notes on content: No language issues. Predation is talked about and shown a little bit. Some readers may want to know the book talks about evolutionary theories of how falcons are related to dinosaurs.
An engaging and informative look at birds of prey. I like that the illustrations are detailed enough you can identify the different birds in real life from looking at the pictures in here.
Notes on content: No language issues. Predation is talked about and shown a little bit. Some readers may want to know the book talks about evolutionary theories of how falcons are related to dinosaurs.
February 17, 2024
3.5 stars // I was really conflicted with this one because while I think a graphic novel series about science is genius, I had a hard time getting through it. I think this is because it didn't really have a story line, and I had a hard time focusing on reading facts...
Even so, I can see why Science Comics are incredibly popular with my 4th and 5th graders, and I did enjoy learning fun things about birds of prey. Especially the part about Aeschylus, who died after a Lammergier dropped a turtle on his head because the bird thought his bald head was a rock.
Even so, I can see why Science Comics are incredibly popular with my 4th and 5th graders, and I did enjoy learning fun things about birds of prey. Especially the part about Aeschylus, who died after a Lammergier dropped a turtle on his head because the bird thought his bald head was a rock.
January 23, 2022
Kids of all ages will love the conversational presentation of facts on the anatomy, history, sport, and ecological importance of raptors. Older students will find the amount of information, which includes a glossary, as satisfying as any text heavy title, and younger readers will be enthralled factoids and colorful illustrations. This is a fantastic addition to this series which never outgrows the audience!
March 6, 2022
Outstanding. Terrific use of the comic format to show some glorious images of inspiring raptors and present interesting facts and details about these birds. I liked the nod towards their appearances in myth and history as well as anatomical breakdowns, environmental concerns, and behavior. Comprehensive without being overwhelming.
May 30, 2022
Very good information and presentation on birds of prey. It took a little long for the author to explain that the book was going to focus only on diurnal birds of prey (eagles, falcons, hawks, etc.) and not nocturnal birds of prey (namely owls). Otherwise, very interesting and I learned a lot! I hope the author does a nocturnal birds of prey book next.
June 5, 2022
All the facts about birds of prey/raptors you never knew you needed. My favorite tidbit was that Aeschylus (ancient Greek poet from my college drama major days) was killed by a bird dropping a turtle on his head (mistaking his bald head for a rock). The graphic novel format really conveys the action and movement of the variety of birds presented.
July 4, 2022
A very interesting collection of facts about birds of prey. To narrow the focus somewhat, owls are excluded. The framing device in this one is odd: a falconer at a medieval faire explains birds of prey to a squirrel his falcon startled. Fortunately, that device is largely in the background and doesn't take up too much space.
May 14, 2024
One big info-dump. But for birds of prey this works. Very lightly framed. The art is fine, the writing fine. There are lots and lots of birds described but it never feels overwhelming. This might mean that this is not actually a good introductory book, it might just work if you already know a lot about birds.
December 15, 2025
This has been a fun series to discover. There is a lot of great information though sometimes this one went a bit more in-depth that TH1 cared for. The last page is a bit unsettling, and there are numerous pages throughout that depict birds eating other animals. But a fun walk-through of Birds of Prey.
February 24, 2024
This book was very fun to read because I love birds of prey. It is a great source of info about birds of prey. You could use this book as a source for a project. I recommend this book to anyone who is studying for a project or simply loves birds of prey.
March 18, 2024
Focusing on diurnal birds of prey, we get history, biology, feeding habits and environmental impacts. Be aware, if you're squeamish, a lot of animals get eaten. The framing sequence of a falconer talking to a squirrel wasn't really necessary.
March 14, 2025
Interesting quick read about birds of prey. I learned so many fascinating facts. For instance, a raptor’s eyes are so large that they can’t move inside their skulls - so birds of prey have long, flexible necks to help them move their whole head to see better.
Want to read
August 12, 2021Note: I received a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.
June 12, 2022
A good book in the series
August 10, 2022
Very informative and factual. The illustrations are freat.
September 16, 2022
More great science
January 31, 2023
Some of the Science Comics are a little toooooo scientific for kids, but Birds of Prey is not. Very informative and funny. I learned a lot! Good for strong 4th grade readers and up.
February 12, 2023
3.5 stars
November 10, 2023
2023 - 5th/6th grade Battle of the Books
December 10, 2023
Birds of Prey
This book did an excellent job at explaining the wonders of raptors! I had excellent time reading it. Definitely recommend reading this book!
This book did an excellent job at explaining the wonders of raptors! I had excellent time reading it. Definitely recommend reading this book!
December 27, 2023
This one is a little disjointed in terms of narrative and the overall presentation of information, but there's still a lot of good info and beautiful art
March 8, 2024
Read for BOTB with my son. I didnt agree with all of it but learned a lot. The series seems great for preteens learning something new in an interesting way.
January 1, 2025
Very repetitive. Gets boring quickly. Fine enough for reference but horrible for actual reading.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews