A fresh perspective on Black history.
Reclaiming Black people’s botanical heritage.
Plant biologist Montgomery melds scientific expertise with memoir and family history to reveal the multifaceted connections of trees and plants to the Black American experience. She focuses on seven trees in particular: pecan, sycamore, willow, poplar, oak, mulberry, and apple, each of which—along with the cotton shrub—bears witness to enslavement, emancipation, and a legacy of racism. Growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, Montgomery was surrounded by trees in her neighborhood and in the woods where she and her siblings played. Some connections to trees came from childhood experiences, others from family stories. She discovered that in the segregated South in which her parents grew up, “Black Americans frequently were not allowed to purchase or consume vanilla ice cream—it was considered a ‘pure’ ice cream reserved for white Americans.” To flavor their homemade ice cream, Black people added pecans; butter pecan ice cream was a family favorite. Trees had tragic associations, too: throughout the South, many types were used for whippings and hangings. The connection between poplars and lynchings appears in the popular song “Strange Fruit.” Sycamores, besides being hanging trees, also helped enslaved people to escape: Their girth was large enough to hide a runaway. In fact, Montgomery discovered, part of the Underground Railroad is known as “Sycamore Trail, so named due to the rows of sycamore trees growing on the banks” of a creek in Ohio. Blacks and Indigenous peoples developed sophisticated botanical knowledge, both in plant cultivation and medicinal uses. Leaves of the willow, for example, were made into poultices or infusions for the treatment of aches and swelling; bark extracts for treating dysentery; root infusions as an anti-diarrheal. Botanical knowledge, Montgomery argues persuasively, was intrinsic to Black people’s survival and sustenance before and after emancipation.
A fresh perspective on Black history.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9781250335166
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.
A celebration of animal companions, mammalian, reptilian, avian, and otherwise.
The Ulysses S. Cat of NPR commentator Simon’s title was a “chunky orange Scottish Fold with endearing floppy ears and a broad, flat face that looked…as if he had been running full steam after a mouse when a door opened and…splat!” He may not have been the most photogenic of critters, but he was a steadfast companion to Simon’s mother and stepfather as the latter suffered illness and death. Other creatures populate Simon’s pages: a betta named Salman Fishdie, a grasshopper named Hoppy, many dogs and cats. Simon ranges widely to collect his stories; among the most affecting is a portrait of the people of Sarajevo under siege by Serbian forces, punctuated by an impatient colleague’s saying to Simon, “I do not want to get shot while doing a fucking pet story.” A good point, that, but Simon is emboldened and moved by the Sarajevans’ and U.N. soldiers’ care for pets displaced from their homes. “In making room for animals at the lowest times of their lives,” he writes, “Sarajevo showed the world real humanitarian aid.” In a somewhat lighter turn, Simon voices the hope that the afterlife will involve meeting again with all the animals and people we have loved, with no hard distinction drawn between birds, dogs, cats, turtles, and other beloved animal companions and other members of one’s family, biological and elective. While recognizing that animals make us better humans, holding unconditional love but eschewing grudges, Simon also decries the misuse of animals, particularly in laboratory settings where other modeling methods can be used that do not visit pain and death on such creatures as chimpanzees and white rats. Writes Simon, meaningfully, “Someday, I’m pretty sure we’ll look back on our use of animals in this way as something brutal.” Amen.
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781324117186
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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