Book Review: How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers

Book Review: How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers

Author: Robert Williams Wood

Date: 1917 (Dodd Mead), 1959 (Dover)

Publisher: Dodd Mead / Dover

ISBN: 0-486-20523-1

Length: 54 pages

Illustrations: woodcuts (and calligraphy) by the author

Quote: “You never hear the Crocus croak.”

The blurb on the Dover edition tells us that Robert Williams Wood was a leading physicist in his day. By 1959 he had become “the late” Professor Wood, and his daughter’s introduction to the Dover edition describes it as “the simple, whimsical humor that was so characteristic of my father.”

“Simple, whimsical humor” pretty much describes this collection of cartoons and poems that play on the names of various plants, birds, and other animals in this “Manual of Flornithology.” We learn the differences between the Burr and the Bird, the Roc and the Shamrock, the Eel and the Elephant, the Elk and the Whelk, and many other pairs (and one trio) of creatures we would never have thought were much alike before...except that Wood has managed to draw them so that each pair looks sort of alike.

The California Quail is said

To have a tail upon his head,

While contrary-wise we style the Kale,

A cabbage-head upon a tail.

It is not hard to tell the two,

The Quail commences with a queue.

It should go without saying that all the jokes are clean enough to share with your grandmother...except that, if you’re my age and lucky enough to have a living grandmother, she probably remembers them. How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers was a bestseller in its day, reprinted 28 times between 1917 and 1932. Even the parents of people my age probably remember this book. Not that they will necessarily mind having a new copy to share with their grandchildren.