Watching her inspect the carcass of an insect on my windowsill one afternoon, I found myself thinking, I have fallen in love with your strangeness.

NEWYORKER: Sweetheart Sorrow

The blue notebooks that neatly lined the south wall of my room were reserved for "Maps of People Doing Things, " as opposed to the green notebooks on the east wall, which contained zoological, geological, and topographical maps, or the red notebooks on the west wall, which was where I mapped out insect anatomy in case my mother, Dr. Clair Linneaker Spivet, ever called upon my services.

NPR: Excerpt: 'The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet'

Within the next hour, tiny pewees and hefty puffbirds, insect-eating tyrants and egg-snatching toucans had paraded in front of my cabin, each newcomer more brightly feathered than the last.

WSJ: Bird Watching in Misiones Province, Argentina