animals

January is national hobby month and the perfect time to try out something new! I enjoy plenty of hobbies, but I was feeling the itch to try some drawing, and a quick search through the library catalog revealed a number of options for a variety of skill levels. "Drawing Class - Animals" was one of the titles I grabbed and it seemed approachable. A step-by-step guide to drawing cartoon animals, the concept of using simple shapes to build up to a finished product was quite appealing, so I tested a few designs on a scrap of paper. 

Drawing a sheep, wild boar, and bison gave me a sense of the

In 2001, C.J. Box released his first novel featuring Joe Pickett, a game warden from Twelve Sleep Wyoming. Establishing Pickett as a man with a strong moral compass and fierce devotion to his friends and family, it isn’t hard to see why Box has written nineteen additional stories featuring this classic western archetype.

As an introduction to Joe Pickett, Open Season drops the reader into one of his first days on the job as the new game warden in town. Somewhat bumbling, but with a clear respect for the rule of law above all else, he is not well liked in town. This is to be expected, coming

Beg: a Radical New Way of Regarding Animals, with its sweet-faced dog peering at me from a soft, sage green background, imploring me to “regard him in a new way” didn’t prepare me for the most heavy-handed, condescending book I’ve ever experienced. Freedman doesn’t actually present “a radical new way of regarding animals” so much as beat readers over the head with how perfectly enlightened she’s become and then shame us into submitting to her will.

After about page 50, I had a hard time imagining who Freedman’s target audience could possibly be. Readers already involved in rescue won’t learn

Stunning! This series offers a sweeping panorama of the African continent. However, the stories presented here are often intimate, following individual animals through both ordinary and special events in their lives. Many of the animal behaviors this series captures are firsts in wildlife filmmaking. Even the series narrator, David Attenborough, who boasts a lifetime of wildlife observation, is surprised by these unexpected dramas.

The cinematography is top-notch, and I really enjoyed following the cameramen and women behind the scenes to see how they labored to catch some of their amazing

Teeth, claws, horns. These are animal defenses we’re familiar with. What about slime? Toxic explosions? Blood shooting from an eye? Learn about these and other totally cool and utterly gross ways that animals protect themselves in Rebecca Johnson’s When Lunch Fights Back: Wickedly Clever Animal Defenses.

This is a short, intriguing book for older children and anyone interested in fun (and rather disgusting) facts about animals.

Rebecca Johnson has written numerous science books for children that are entertaining as well as informative, such as Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature’s Undead a

Enchanting language, lush scenery, a romping, completely factual story and a rascally, joyful raccoon are the fixings for this adorable and happy memoir by Sterling North. 

This was my favorite animal story as a child.  And it is still at the top of my list.  I started squealing the moment Rascal was swiped from the woods, and made no efforts to contain my delight for the duration of the book.  My adult squeals echoed the squeals of my 10 year-old self as Rascal snuggled his way into Sterling’s bed, made a sugar lump disappear and trilled all of his desires, questions, indignations and love. 

Kitty lovers will appreciate Caroline Paul's humor, devotion and manic-depressive curiosity in Lost Cat.

No one loves anthropomorphisization more than me. So Unlikely Friendships is just the kind of book I like to savor over a warm mug of cocoa. Holland describes “friendships” between species, sometimes even predators with prey. Everyone knows about the gorilla Koko and her kittens, which are included here. But my favorites include the hippopotamus and the pygmy goat (seriously, what’s funnier than a goat standing on a hippo?), the macaque and the kitten, the elephant and the stray dog, the salty dog and the dolphins…oh, never mind, they’re all my favorites! 

With only three to four pages

When I first picked up this book I figured that it would be all about the cat. Of course, much of it was, but there is a lot more to this book. The author, Vicki Myron, also writes about her own life, with its trials and tribulations, ups and downs. In so doing, she paints a picture of life in a small midwestern town. Most of the book takes place in Spence, a little town in northwest Iowa, in the midst of farming country. So we also get a glimpse of what life was like for famers in the heartland from the 1960s to the present.

And, of course, the book is about Dewey Readmore Books. He was

What does compassion have to do with what we eat?  Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated, makes the argument that the answer to this question does matter.  At least he’s betting on it as compassion becomes the driving, emotionally-charged, life-changing force in his new book Eating Animals.  Foer’s book is a moral quest.  He’s about to become a father and, as all fathers’ want, he wants what’s best for his son.  But all similarities stop here, for Foer’s quest is about whether his family eats meat, unlike what many other fathers desire for their children:  spending more