History is found everywhere on the Island. Christie Palmer Lowrance hopes her first published children’s book, The Last Heath Hen: An Extinction Story, documents an important part of that story.

Writing a nonfiction book in a way that is easily digestible for children was a key goal for Ms. Lowrance. Having spent over five years prior writing a biography about Thornton Burgess, a naturalist and children’s author who saw the last heath hen in the late 1920s, she was then inspired to write her next book.

“It just became clear to me that this was a story that was ideal to give children as a means of understanding the process of extinction,” Ms. Lowrance said. “This isn’t the giant Tyrannosaurus Rexes that went extinct a gazillion years ago. This happened 100 years ago on Martha’s Vineyard.”

The hen, known as Booming Ben, was last seen after Mr. Burgess and his colleague Alfred Gross banded the hen and released it into the wild on the Vineyard. Having already spent time researching Ms. Burgess’s life, the writing process of her new book itself was relatively quick.

“The truth of the research is what nonfiction writers love,” she said. “It’s where you get to poke around and explore things and you have to do that to create the fullest picture of whatever your subject is. The deeper you research, as long as you don’t get carried away and research forever, the better your storytelling is.”

The local angle of the story also intrigued Ms. Lowrance, who hopes to teach children that species preservation is important.

“Life matters and this is the effort of many people to save the life of this particular species,” she said. “[My intention is] not to scare children, but to think that extinction is something that does happen and it took place right on the Vineyard.”

The illustration process was a new endeavor, which Ms. Lowrance embraced. The illustrations were drawn by Michael Berndt.

“I hadn’t worked with illustrators before so that was a new experience and a learning curve,” she said.

Ms. Lowrance hopes to carry on Mr. Burgess’s legacy.

“The underlying piece of everything he did was to give children a knowledge of nature and then a love for nature and respect for wildlife,” she said. “I feel this book is in that tradition and it feels appropriate to me to carry this story that involves Burgess.”