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 powerful melding of image and text inspired by Instagram yet original in its execution.
Smith returns with a photo-heavy book of days, celebrating births, deaths, and the quotidian, all anchored by her distinctive style.
In 2018, the musician and National Book Award–winning author began posting on Instagram, and the account quickly took off. Inspired by the captioned photo format, this book provides an image for every day of the year and descriptions that are by turns intimate, humorous, and insightful, and each bit of text adds human depth to the image. Smith, who writes and takes pictures every day, is clearly comfortable with the social media platform—which “has served as a way to share old and new discoveries, celebrate birthdays, remember the departed, and salute our youth”—and the material translates well to the page. The book, which is both visually impactful and lyrically moving, uses Instagram as a point of departure, but it goes well beyond to plumb Smith’s extensive archives. The deeply personal collection of photos includes old Polaroid images, recent cellphone snapshots, and much-thumbed film prints, spanning across decades to bring readers from the counterculture movement of the 1960s to the present. Many pages are taken up with the graves and birthdays of writers and artists, many of whom the author knew personally. We also meet her cat, “Cairo, my Abyssinian. A sweet little thing the color of the pyramids, with a loyal and peaceful disposition.” Part calendar, part memoir, and part cultural record, the book serves as a rich exploration of the author’s fascinating mind. “Offered in gratitude, as a place to be heartened, even in the basest of times,” it reminds us that “each day is precious, for we are yet breathing, moved by the way light falls on a high branch, or a morning worktable, or the sculpted headstone of a beloved poet.”
A powerful melding of image and text inspired by Instagram yet original in its execution.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-44854-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Dense and striking, to be savored and reread.
A compact return to the personal by one of today’s sharpest literary minds.
Following two recent works of cultural criticism, Nelson’s new text swings and sings back to the intimate and personal. Her quest to alleviate persistent, consuming orofacial pain serves as a narrative backbone assembled from a series of treatment plans, including Botox, a tongue-tie frenectomy, and even the suggestion to tape her mouth shut while sleeping. As she collects recommendations for pain management that veer from the surgical to the “woo-woo”—each promising accurate diagnosis and permanent deliverance—Nelson drifts between the tangible sensation of her pain and the surreality of her dreams. Her search for relief swells around the puncture wound of the coronavirus, and her prose echoes the nebulous space and abrupt transitions between specifics of time, place, interrupted activity, and the singularity and absurdity of that period. Tensions and tenderness in her relationships with her partner, her son, and a dear friend on the verge of a lonely death are atomized by the pandemic, dancing in the shadows alongside twisted nightmares, reflections on her career, and visits to dentists, therapists, and other healers. While the text is short, it packs plenty of Nelson’s signature power punches of brilliance and shrewd humor, driving the reader to look between carefully constructed lines that twitch with secrets and memories held and defended. The author’s audit of her physical pain, its undulating waves, and its stubborn betrayal of and distraction to her body and mind serves as a conduit for discerning the necessity of a person’s mouth, voice, and words, cautioning against both exhausting one’s words and stifling a person’s speech, revealing both the power and burden of what is said and what is not.
Dense and striking, to be savored and reread.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798891060111
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Wave Books
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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