Panda Love is a collection of incredible images of these gentle giants. Ami Vitale's stunning photographs, taken on location in China, document the efforts to breed pandas and release them back into the wild. Ami was given unprecedented access to the pandas and her photos give an amazing insight into the bears' lives in both the sanctuaries and their natural habitat. Fluffy panda cubs tumble out of baskets and play hide-and-seek with their carers, while the adult pandas curiously explore the forest and climb trees. The giant panda is everyone's favorite bamboo-munching bear. China may be on its way to successfully saving its most famous ambassador, and Panda Love lovingly documents the process of putting the wild back into an icon.
While time-traveling brother and sister team Jack and Annie journey to a village in the mountains of southeast China, they find they have arrived on the day of a historic earthquake.
"In August 2015, zookeepers at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, were thrilled to spot a tiny shadow on an ultrasound. For a species as rare as the giant panda, every new cub is cause for celebration. Zoo staff monitored mother Mei Xiang, and within days a newborn appeared, weighing in at just one third of a pound. While Mei Xiang cradled her vulnerable infant, zookeepers monitored the pair day and night through cameras in the panda den, and some two million viewers logged on to the zoo website. First Ladies Michelle Obama and Peng Liyuan hosted a ceremony to announce the cub's name: Bei Bei, meaning "precious treasure" in Mandarin Chinese. An instant celebrity, the cub captured hearts all over the world. But pandas in zoos are considered emissaries from the People's Republic of China, the only country where they live in the wild. Four years after his birth in America, Bei Bei would embark on an important new mission."--
Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time. Ruth was the toast of 1930s New York, a dress designer newly married to a wealthy adventurer, Bill Harkness. Just weeks after their wedding, however, Bill decamped for China in hopes of becoming the first Westerner to capture a giant panda–an expedition on which many had embarked and failed miserably. Bill was also to fail in his quest, dying horribly alone in China and leaving his widow heartbroken and adrift. And so Ruth made the fateful decision to adopt her husband’s dream as her own and set off on the adventure of a lifetime. It was not easy. Indeed, everything was against Ruth Harkness. In decadent Shanghai, the exclusive fraternity of white male explorers patronized her, scorned her, and joked about her softness, her lack of experience and money. But Ruth ignored them, organizing, outfitting, and leading a bare-bones campaign into the majestic but treacherous hinterlands where China borders Tibet. As her partner she chose Quentin Young, a twenty-two-year-old Chinese explorer as unconventional as she was, who would join her in a romance as torrid as it was taboo. Traveling across some of the toughest terrain in the world–nearly impenetrable bamboo forests, slick and perilous mountain slopes, and boulder-strewn passages–the team raced against a traitorous rival, and was constantly threatened by hordes of bandits and hostile natives. The voyage took months to complete and cost Ruth everything she had. But when, almost miraculously, she returned from her journey with a baby panda named Su Lin in her arms, the story became an international sensation and made the front pages of newspapers around the world. No animal in history had gotten such attention. And Ruth Harkness became a hero. Drawing extensively on American and Chinese sources, including diaries, scores of interviews, and previously unseen intimate letters from Ruth Harkness, Vicki Constantine Croke has fashioned a captivating and richly textured narrative about a woman ahead of her time. Part Myrna Loy, part Jane Goodall, by turns wisecracking and poetic, practical and spiritual, Ruth Harkness is a trailblazing figure. And her story makes for an unforgettable, deeply moving adventure.
Stillwater, the beloved Zen panda, now in his own Apple TV+ original series! This Caldecott Honor Book presents wondrous Zen tales to light up your life.... When a giant panda named Stillwater moves into Michael, Addy, and Karl's neighborhood, he tells them the most amazing stories! To Addy, he tells a tale of a poor man who gives gifts to a robber. To Michael, he tells of a farmer who learns not to judge luck. And to Karl, he tells the tale of a monk who continues to carry the weight of a burden long past.With vibrant watercolors and elegant ink drawings, Jon J Muth--and Stillwater the bear--imaginatively present three classic Zen stories that abound with enlightenment and love.
In 1934, Ruth Harkness had never seen a panda bear. Not many people in the world had. But soon the young Mrs. Harkness would inherit an expedition from her explorer husband: the hunt for a panda. She knew that bringing back a panda would be hard. Impossible, even. But she intended to try. So she went to China, where she found a guide, built traps, gathered supplies, and had explorers' clothes made—unheard of for a woman in those days. Then she set out up the Yangtze River and into the wilderness. What she discovered would awe America: an adorable baby panda she named Su Lin, which means "a little bit of something very cute." With breathtaking illustrations from Caldecott Honor artist Melissa Sweet, this little-known true story shares the tale of an adventurous woman who was bold and brave—and the unforgettable journey that helped shape American attitudes toward wildlife.
Irresistible and informative, this photo-essay from Sandra Markle features sixteen baby pandas that were born into captivity in China's Wolong Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center. With the help of these devoted scientists, all sixteen received the food and care they needed to survive. Using basic addition and counting with numbers 1 to 8 Markle tells the story of these remarkable-and numerous-baby pandas as they grow and play together.
Stella is 17, attractive, smart, deeply alienated and unable to face life's absurdities. She is not nihilistic; she is prematurely exhausted. Since her parents OD'd on designer drugs when she was 11, she has lived with foster parents, while her grandfather, her only living relative, repeatedly attempts suicide in his retirement home.Beneath Stella's mordantly funny take on life is the decisiveness with which she disengages from it, planting clues for the act she's about to commit. With remarkable wit, Stella turns her farewell to suburbia into a philosophical inquiry.