The Beaver Book

Sumguyen has always had a thick mane of hair, in the summer of 2016 he decided to grow a beard. Deep into month three he started to look like an armpit with eyeballs.It was a sultry August night in Old Town Scottsdale as Bimisi and Sumguyen made their way from one bar to another. They took pause to to enjoy the rhythms of a homeless crooner who was soulfully picking his guitar. When Sumguyen threw a five into his tip jar the artist looked up, thanked him with a nod and said, "That is a beautiful beard. My friend Brenda has a beard just like that, but hers doesn't talk."A fair amount of beer sprayed from Bimisi's nose...and just like that they had their subject matter for the final book of season one. Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber is the fifth of five books that make up Reach Around Books Season One.

It's Ramadan, a time to focus on good deeds and to fast, and Badir and his brother, Anis, are out for a walk one evening while they wait for their iftar meal. In the park Badir sees a rat. A very, very large rat. He soon learns it’s actually a beaver, an animal that doesn't live in Tunisia, the country Badir and his family have emigrated from. It turns out that some of the neighbors who enjoy the park think this beaver is a bit of a pest, but Badir thinks it's wonderful and learns everything he can about the iconic Canadian animal. When a petition is started to remove the beaver, Badir, who knows firsthand how difficult it is to leave your home behind, rallies his classmates to save it. And with a little help from new friends, the kids learn that collaboration and faith can change the way we think about the world. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Beavers are the great comeback story--a keystone species that survived ice ages, major droughts, the fur trade, urbanization and near extinction. Their ability to create and maintain aquatic habitats has endeared them to conservationists, but puts the beavers at odds with urban and industrial expansion. These conflicts reflect a dichotomy within our national identity. We place environment and our concept of wilderness as a key touchstone for promotion and celebration, while devoting significant financial and personal resources to combating "the beaver problem." We need to rethink our approach to environmental conflict in general, and our approach to species-specific conflicts in particular. Our history often celebrates our integration of environment into our identity, but our actions often reveal an exploitation of environment and celebration of its subjugation. Why the conflict with the beaver? It is one of the few species that refuses to play by our rules and continues to modify environments to meet its own needs and the betterment of so many other species, while at the same time showing humans that complete dominion over nature is not necessarily achievable.

"It takes a lot of balls to play golf like I do."--Pibber PayneSports like football, basketball, hockey and women's beach volleyball are intended to be watched, not actually played. Other sports are almost painful to watch, but participation is worth the price of admission EVERY time. Bimisi and Sumguyen have a long-standing policy of not participating in any sport unless it is acceptable, even expected that they will be drinking the entire duration. Sports on their short list include bowling, fishing, billiards and tubing down the Salt River under the Arizona summer sun.While the aforementioned do involve excessive amounts of skill, dedication and beer; there is only one sport that includes a motorized cart, all the booze you can handle and the iconic ball washing machine. This is the logic they applied when the decision was made to take Brenda and her beaver out for a lovely round of golf. Enjoy.

A boy patiently listens to his mother’s reasons for not making bannock—all the result of a beaver’s need to make a dam. Includes a bannock recipe!

A clueless beaver discovers the impact his actions have on others.

“Unexpectedly delightful reading—there is much to learn from the buck-toothed rodents of yore” (National Post). Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent’s most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the edge of the northern tundra. Wherever there was wood and water, there were beavers—sixty million, or more—and wherever there were beavers, there were intricate natural communities that depended on their activities. Then the European fur traders arrived. Once They Were Hats examines humanity’s fifteen-thousand–year relationship with Castor canadensis, and the beaver’s even older relationship with North American landscapes and ecosystems. From the waterlogged environs of the Beaver Capital of Canada to the wilderness cabin that controversial conservationist Grey Owl shared with pet beavers; from a bustling workshop where craftsmen make beaver-felt cowboy hats using century-old tools to a tidal marsh where an almost-lost link between beavers and salmon was recently found, it’s a journey of discovery to find out what happened after we nearly wiped this essential animal off the map, and how we can learn to live with beavers now that they’re returning. “Fascinating and smartly written.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

A 1984 Newbery Honor Book Although he faces responsibility bravely, thirteen-year-old Matt is more than a little apprehensive when his father leaves him alone to guard their new cabin in the wilderness. When a renegade white stranger steals his gun, Matt realizes he has no way to shoot game or to protect himself. When Matt meets Attean, a boy in the Beaver clan, he begins to better understand their way of life and their growing problem in adapting to the white man and the changing frontier. Elizabeth George Speare’s Newbery Honor-winning survival story is filled with wonderful detail about living in the wilderness and the relationships that formed between settlers and natives in the 1700s. Now with an introduction by Joseph Bruchac.