HOW TO PROMENADE WITH A PYTHON (AND NOT GET EATEN) by Rachel Poliquin and illustrated by Kathryn Durst is out today from Tundra Books!
In this hilarious new graphic non-fiction series, a savvy cockroach shares wise tips and tricks to surviving an encounter with a charming predator who may (or may not) want to be your friend.
Celeste is a cockroach, and everyone knows that cockroaches are survivors, so who better to give advice on surviving an encounter with a polite predator? Everyone also knows that taking a moonlit promenade with a deadly reticulated python (named Frank) is a very bad idea. But Celeste loves very bad ideas, and she is willing to put your life on the line to prove herself right! Need to stop a python from swallowing you head-first? Wear a lampshade as a hat! Want to speed up a three-hundred-pound snake? Try roller skates! What’s the perfect light snack for a python? A chicken! Using her superior pythonine knowledge, Celeste comes up with various strategies and solutions — many dangerous, most absurd, but all based on the biology of pythons. Meanwhile, Frank is hatching his own plans.
Rachel Poliquin has created a delightfully preposterous premise that, combined with Kathryn Durst’s hilarious illustrations, will have readers laughing out loud as they learn about python biology and hunting behavior.
Rachel Poliquin is a writer engaged in all things orderly and disorderly in the natural world. With a cross-disciplinary background in visual arts, cultural history and natural history, she holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of British Columbia and a Post-Doctoral Degree in History from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rachel is the author of the Superpower Field Guide series (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and Beastly Puzzles: A Brain-Boggling Animal Guessing Game (Kids Can Press). Rachel is represented by Amy Tompkins.