Selemonas Paltanavičius. Šaltakraujai (Cold-Blooded creature), Vilnius: Alma littera, 2025. – 128 p.

Although the book is about cold-blooded animals, the experienced storyteller’s tone is, as always, warm and attentive to the young reader’s abilities and curiosity. The book begins with the author’s childhood memory of an early spring, when a frog found frozen on the ice came back to life in his brother’s hands – a true miracle of nature! Step by step, the naturalist explains that cold-blooded animals are very diverse, yet all share dependence on environmental temperature. Illustrated with abundant photographs of animals and their habitats, the book presents fish, amphibians, reptiles, and various species either long-established in Lithuania or recently introduced and considered invasive. Each section explains in detail the biology, body structure, diet, reproduction, and habitat of the species, so that more inquisitive young naturalists will find complex scientific information. Those who have never held a frog or seen a snake will be irresistibly drawn into the author’s playful invitation to learn about the early life of fish, about fish with only one side or ‘fake’ fish, garlic-scented frogs, why young tadpoles have tails, and why not all tailed animals are snakes.

The professional biologist and writer also discusses human–animal friendship, which is reflected in place names, fairy tales, proverbs, and folk art. In the final chapter, the author draws attention to strange animals with unusual abilities to become dormant and then come back to life, which have always sparked the imagination and were often regarded as intermediaries between the living and the dead, capable of bringing luck or harm. The naturalist does not ask whether humans always bring fortune to animals, but he provides the answer in the concluding subsection on rare and endangered species, whose fate often depends on human activity. “Everything is in our hands; we must help animals ourselves” (p. 61), the author writes, inviting young readers to grow into sensitive, responsible, warm-blooded people.

Selemonas Paltanavičius (b. 1956) is a naturalist by vocation, an author of books for children and adults, a photographer, traveller, and host of television and radio programmes. He has published a total of 100 fiction and non-fiction books for both children and adults. He has received numerous prestigious national awards, including the IBBY Pranas Mašiotas Award in 2020 and the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas Knight’s Cross in 2022 for promoting his homeland worldwide. In 2015, Selemonas Paltanavičius was awarded the Medal of the Order of Merit for Lithuania and in 2016, he received the Children’s Literature Award from the Ministry of Education and Science.

Contact for rights: benas@booksmugglersagency.com or d.sinkeviciute@almalittera.lt