What a wonderful season it has been for me and nonfiction! This is one of my favorites of the year. Feathers is well-researched, gracefully written, and full of information and wonder. Hanson, a field biologist, delves into the natural history of feathers (their evolution, structure, and functions), dipping into plenty of fascinating human culture and history of science along the way.

Enthusiasm and erudition jump off every enjoyable page. In my reading journal, I kept writing excerpts and reflections with exclamations, Hanson made me so excited to learn about feathers. I honestly don’t know how he managed to keep me so entranced, but from his fish-out-of-water journey to Las Vegas (“an unlikely habitat for a field biologist”) to learn about the feathered costumes of show girls, to his backyard experiment plucking and cataloguing all the feathers on a found dead songbird (using The Joy of Cooking as his plucking reference), I became giddy with laughter and started looking at the world in a new way.

The delightful writing is paired with gorgeous illustrations throughout, so you can marvel at feathers through word and image. This would make a great gift for readers who enjoy nature writing or what I think of as cross-section histories (like Cod or Salt by Mark Kurlansky). It was also just the right read for me when I wasn’t sure what to read next: perfectly unique and satisfying. ~Tegan