August 2008 - Page 3 of 4

Rabbits

A Pet\’s Life
by Anita Ganeri

Another book read with my daughter in our research on pets. Rabbits is a very simple book, along the same lines as Goldfish. It\’s fairly informative for a four-year-old, and quite charming. The bunnies all look very cute and bright-eyed. There were two points where I was left questioning, though. At one point the book stated \”Rabbits can have lots of babies. It is best not to let them breed.\” Bold words are defined in the book. But when I glanced at the short glossary, the definition for breed was a \”type or kind of animal\”. Probably no little kids would care about this kind of error, but it bugged me. At another point the book said that it\’s not a good idea to keep a rabbit with a guinea pig. It doesn\’t say why. Do they fight? Compete for food? Does it just mean don\’t keep them in the same cage? Can they pass diseases to each other? Now I\’m curious.

Rating: 3/5 32 pages, 2003

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

The Elm at the Edge of the Earth

by Robert D. Hale

This is a book I found browsing in a public library one day many, many years ago. I read it several times from the library, then finally acquired my own copy. It\’s the story of a young boy growing up in a most curious circumstance. His mother being ill, David is sent to live with his Aunt Maude, who is head cook at the County Home. This nearly self-sustaining farm is home to a hundred and sixty people who don\’t fit into society for one reason or another- some have physical handicaps, mental disabilities or illness, others have been \”put away\” for misconduct. Although it is never clearly explained (since everything is seen through the eyes of a child), the Home seems to fill roles of Social Services, mental institution and orphanage all in one. David roams the buildings and landscape making unlikely friends such as Rose, committed for killing her husband, and Adeline, a black girl who practices voodoo. He raises ducks and causes trouble, struggles in school, tries to deal with bullies, and thoroughly enjoys life. David accepts everyone as they are, innocent to the prejudices and antipathies many of the people he encounters have against each other. While his aunt can\’t always keep track of him, David finds friendship and guidance from other residents of the Home- some whose advice and teaching aren\’t exactly conventional. The Elm at the Edge of the Earth is a touching, often amusing story. It looks at human nature from the inside out- through the eyes of an innocent boy learning about life from some uncommon people who care about him deeply, each in their own way.

Rating: 3/5 351 pages, 1990

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, General Fiction, Past Reads

Alligators, Raccoons and Other Survivors

The Wildlife of the Future
by Barbara Ford

After reading the weed appreciation book, I was curious about this one that\’s been sitting on my shelf for months. It\’s about wildlife species which have remained successful or even increased in number alongside the growth of human populations. There are several reasons posited why these species thrive, including: they are secretive and require little space, they reproduce rapidly, they eat our garbage, or they are protected by man (endangered species like alligators or game animals like whitetail deer). A lot of the information in Alligators, Raccoons and Other Survivors is about wildlife management programs and protection efforts. Animals getting the spotlight here are alligators and coyotes (included in the chapter titled \”Weed Animals\”) but numerous others are mentioned, such as opossums, snowy egrets, red foxes, beavers, mountain goats and harbor seals. I was surprised to learn that herring gulls are protected animals, because in the heyday of feathered women\’s hats, they were hunted to near extinction. I would have liked to see pigeons included, but I\’m sure there\’s other books that talk about that pervasive creature. Although written for a juvenile audience, this book kept my attention and was quite interesting. It was written twenty-seven years ago; I\’d like to read a more current book about the same subject, with more depth and scope.

Rating: 3/5 160 pages, 1981

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

Mr. Blue

by Margaret Embry

When we were young, my sisters and I would spend a few weeks at our great-aunt\’s house each summer. She has a whole wall of bookshelves in one room downstairs, and I always picked out some to read during our stay. Mr. Blue is one I remember well. It is a charming little book about a big, blue cross-eyed cat who talks (he must be part siamese). There\’s lots of lively pen and ink drawings illustrating the pages. Mr. Blue shows up one rainy day outside a third-grade classroom window, and the kids convince their teacher to let him inside. Before long Mr. Blue has established himself as the classroom cat, even though his curiosity and playfulness cause plenty of trouble. The story is not without suspense, as several times Mr. Blue disappears and the children get anxious about him. My daughter did, too. This is the first book I\’ve read to her from my own collection, and she loved it! We spread the story out over several days, and she was quite willing to pause and utilize the bookmark each evening because she wanted to be sure there\’d be more to read the next night! Now she wants to read it over and over again because \”Mr. Blue is really cool.\” For some time I have been setting aside on one shelf all the books I want to share with her someday: Ramona Quimby, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, James and the Giant Peach, The Secret Garden, etc. This is the first one we\’ve opened (it\’s the simplest story, with the most pictures) and it was a delightful experience. I can\’t wait to introduce her to more!

Rating: 3/5 72 pages, 1963

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic, Re-reads, Travel/Adventure

Hamsters

by Susan Meredith

This book about hamsters is very cute and informative. It has a lot more information in it than the last one we read, but my four year old was so intrigued by the pictures and charm of hamsters she wanted to read it all in one sitting. So we did. Like the other books on pet care we\’ve been recently perusing, Hamsters discusses the pets\’ origins, needs and care. It also tells about the differences between syrian (or golden) hamsters and dwarf hamsters, how to understand your hamster\’s natural behavior, and how to tame it. I learned some interesting things about these small creatures- like they will eat their own droppings (yuck!) and like treats of yogurt (yum!) My daughter and I were both intrigued by the idea of building hamster runs or mazes out of empty tissue boxes, cardboard toilet paper rolls and paper towel tubes. It looks like fun, and a two-page spread explains how. It appears that a hamster would be a better choice of pet for us than mice, as they can adjust to waking up in the early evening for play, and you can let them roam the house in an exercise ball. One of the great things about this book is the illustrations- a mixture of photos and cute cartoon-like drawings- very engaging. A negative aspect was the inclusion of \”internet links\” as stated on the cover. This proved to consist of nothing more than a certain website mentioned repeatedly at the top of numerous pages. It was always the same link, and not to a site about hamsters, but a search engine where you\’d have to do more navigating to find what you want. I found that quite irritating and pointless.

Rating: 3/5 32 pages, 2004

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

To Everything There is a Season

by Dr. Alice G. Miller

This is a book about a garden, written by a christian psychotherapist. It\’s mostly about gardening as a spiritual experience and journey of growth, as far as I can tell. I really liked the conversational tone, personal stories, and some of the quotes. There are lovely line drawings of plants decorating the pages, and a hand-drawn map of the author\’s extensive gardens in the back. It\’s the kind of look I\’d like if I had so much land- mature trees forming a small woodland, ferny undergrowth, flowers for the butterflies, wandering paths…. but reading about it all became rather ho-hum. When I dropped it on the floor in a gesture of dismissal my husband asked about the book\’s premise. I told him (the first two sentences here) and he said in mild surprise: \”and you thought that would be good?\” I shrugged. It seemed so in the beginning, but turns out that To Everything There is a Season just isn\’t the book for me right now.

Abandoned 163 pages, 2005

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Bios / Memoirs

Mice

by Rebecca Sjonger and Bobbie Kalman

The second book I read to my daughter about small pets. It is written for ages 6-12, but she found it quite comprehensible broken down in three shorter readings with lots of discussion. Mice gives easily understood info on the pet house mouse and its care. Especially helpful are a few short lists of questions to help you decide if a mouse pet is right for you. I have decided mice are not for us. Mainly because mice are nocturnal- they sleep all day, and may be provoked to bite if startled awake. Also because you cannot let a pet mouse run around loose to play- our old house has too many small holes and crannies, exposed electric cords, and two cats! I can just picture the first time she would try to hold her pet, it jumping down and disappearing fast. Or getting eaten. Our cats are very good mousers.

My daughter is not convinced. When throughout the book I pointed out to her various reasons a mouse might not be the best pet she always had a quick response. When I told her the mouse sleeps all day so she won\’t have much time to play with it she said \”I\’ll just wake him up!\” I said what if Daddy\’s allergic? and she replied \”We\’ll keep the mousie in the mudroom. Daddy never goes in there.\” Then we tried to think of a safe place to keep a mouse away from our cats, and she got more creative. Her suggestions were: shut up in a dresser drawer, inside my jewelry box, on top of the curtain rod, under daddy\’s pillow, or inside the furnace! What a three-year-old will think of!

I have only one criticism of the book and that is the illustrations. Most are nice photographs, but there are a few drawings, and they\’re terrible. One page of drawings is used to show how mice communicate with body language, but my daughter assumed it was telling you about mice that are old, sick and have fleas, because they all look so poorly!

Rating: 3/5 32 pages, 2004

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

Paths of Desire

The Passions of a Suburban Gardener
by Dominique Browning

I wanted to read a novelistic book about gardening, and what better than one written by an author whose backyard garden was in the suburbs, like me? But Paths of Desire, promising at the beginning, failed to keep my attention after some forty pages. I got tired of reading about the history and architecture of her house, the difficulties in rebuilding a collapsed wall, the arguments with neighbors over trees. I wanted to read about horiculture. I began skimming passages (always a bad sign) and then skipped to the chapter about vermin. Sadly, even the descriptions of her small war against raccoons and skunks was uninteresting. So I quit.

Abandoned ..0/5….. 237 pages, 2004

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Bios / Memoirs

Animal Crackers

by Hannah Tinti

I don\’t quite know what to say about this book. I picked it up totally on a whim from a used bookstore, curious and intrigued by the descriptions inside the flap. Animal Crackers contains eleven short stories, which all feature animals, but not in ways I expected at all. I approached them at random, opening to whichever caught my attention when I had a moment to turn pages. The first story I read, about a boy who throws his pet rabbit out the window to see if it can fly, horrified me. The last one, about an italian boy who becomes a hit man, with some symbolic reference to buffalo- was totally uninteresting. The rest of the stories struck me as deeply ironic, mysterious and rooted firmly in a graphic, gritty reality.

In one, the animals take center stage- three giraffes in a zoo who pretend to be dead in attempt to force their demands on the zookeeper. In others the animals are minor figures that nevertheless loom large- a dog innocently walks through a murder scene, the son of a turkey farmer runs away from home with two classmates, a dead kitten is found in the closet of a disturbed boy. My favorite story was that of an artist who is repainting the background scenery of displays in a natural history museum- and through the glass sees the stuffed bear in the hall come terrifyingly to life. In many of the stories the animals are victimized or used; mirroring some aspect of the main character\’s inner nature or circumstances. It feels like they are the key to each story\’s puzzle but that I understood none of them; quietly in the background they are shouting out a mute message I fail to hear. So even though I find it all disturbing and downright creepy, I\’m shelving this book to read again one day, and see if I can\’t figure out the elusive significance of the animals here- I want to crack the kernels of meaning to their core.

Strange that in this collection, I felt the author\’s intelligence shining through a carefully crafted story that I found perplexing, disconcerting and yet utterly fascinating, but with Capote the similar lack of understanding left me totally untouched and bored. Is it just the presence of the animals? Or something more?

Rating: 3/5 197 pages, 2004

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Short Stories

Goldfish

A Pet\’s Life
by Anita Ganeri

My daughter, almost four years old, wants a pet of her own. I feel she\’s not old enough to take care of a pet by herself (or avoid squeezing it to death). So I agreed (stalling) we will just begin by learning about different kinds of small pets now, and find out which is most suitable, for when she is older. Today we checked out a small pile of juvenile nonfiction titles on keeping fish and small mammals. I don\’t want the responsibility of a puppy yet (or ever, I\’m more fond of cats) and I have no experience with reptiles or birds, so this seemed a good place to start.

The first title I read to her was A Pet\’s Life: Goldfish. It was perfectly suited to her age and scope of interest. It gives very basic information on how to choose a healthy goldfish, set up the tank, feed it properly and keep its environment clean. All in brief paragraphs with simple sentences and bright photographs. We were both pleasantly surprised to learn that you can feed a goldfish fresh chopped lettuce or spinach. At the end of the book is a brief list of facts (and suggestions for further reading)- my daughter didn\’t want to hear them, she\’d already got all the info she needed! But I found a few things interesting- like that the Chinese first kept pet goldfish 4,500 years ago and the oldest living goldfish survived to the incredible age of fifty. Average lifespan of a well-cared for goldfish is about 25 years. This was news to me- the ones in our house growing up were always rather short-lived (weeks alone in the fishbowl, never more than a year or two when I had a proper tank). So apparently I\’ve got more learning to do as well, if we\’re going to keep fish!

Rating: 3/5 32 pages, 2003

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

Month: August 2008

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