A compelling, often surprising account of a Colorado wildlife sanctuary.
The Shellenbargers celebrate a sanctuary for America’s many captive bears and big cats in this work of nonfiction.
In 2020, America got to know Joe Exotic and his exotic animal park thanks to the hit Netflix documentary series Tiger King. But what happens to animals when they are no longer owned by the Joe Exotics of the world? Melanie and Mark Shellenbarger offer this portrait of a very different kind of exotic animal facility—the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado. Started by Pat Craig in the 1980s, the current facility is home to 500-plus animals, including bears, lions, and tigers—including 42 former residents of Joe Exotic’s zoo. All the sanctuary’s animals have been rescued from various states of captivity, from roadside attractions and shuttered circuses to people’s backyards. Some of them come from abroad, like Lambert and Tasha Joy, a lion and tigress rescued from a typhoon-decimated zoo in the North Mariana Islands. The animals had been so isolated that they had not even been socialized in the normal sounds made by their respective species: “Lambert did not know he was a lion and Tasha Joy seemed clueless about the fact that she was a tiger....Having been purchased as cubs from a Guam zoo fifteen years before, both had lived in solitary confinement in the intervening years and simply did not know how to talk.” The book chronicles the origins and operations of the sanctuary, including its many remarkable rescue stories, while also providing commentary on the current “captive wildlife crisis.” The Shellenbargers’ prose is clear and passionate—they admit to learning about both the sanctuary and the crisis relatively recently, and they preach with the strength of the converted. While the book has a strong point of view, it’s generally persuasive, especially when the reader sees the before-and-after photos of some of the rescued animals. (The book’s full-color photography is one of its strongest attributes.) For those fascinated by the world of Tiger King, the book provides further information on the world of captive wildlife and the ways people are working to improve the lives of the animals.
A compelling, often surprising account of a Colorado wildlife sanctuary.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66290-319-9
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Pyree Square Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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