An enjoyable and well-organized but familiar compendium of feline facts.
This primer on cats targets feline fans who want to learn more about their furry friends.
Wallin is a cat lover, and she’s put together a book about her favorite feline subjects, complete with a number of images by various photographers of her own dear pet, Kitty, and others. The short work (under 135 pages) tackles the broadest of cat topics, with chapters on the history of felines; an anatomy of the animals, with wisdom on what a twitching tail means and how they use their whiskers and eyes; how cats and humans communicate with each other; the lore of felines, such as their nine lives and why they land on their feet; cats in literature (or “Kitty Lit,” one of several clever chapter names); how cats comfort humans; and famous felines. She ends the volume with a dog’s diary and a cat’s diary, which humorously point out the differences in these domesticated pets’ demeanors. An epilogue details the author’s history with animals, including her beloved Kitty, who’s a fixture throughout the book. The chapters are short and packed with intriguing information, even if the details don’t always advance the story of cats. Most of this material has been published somewhere before, and Wallin has simply compiled the tidbits and skillfully organized them for her readers. (She does a superb job of giving credit where credit is due.) From the introduction, it’s clear that the primer will not delve too deeply. “Cats are not perfect,” the first words read. “They can be a little demanding and to risk understatement, very self-centered.” That won’t be news to many feline lovers, and that’s a problem with the work—not much is fresh or particularly insightful. The first chapter is a brief history of cats and, though feline fans will certainly love to know where their frisky friends came from, it doesn’t rigorously cover the subject. The chapter on the feline body, “Cat-ology,” tells readers that the animals are extraordinary jumpers—a well-known fact. Still, the book doesn’t purport to break new ground in feline studies, and what’s here is sweetly and concisely presented. Cat lovers should lap it up.
An enjoyable and well-organized but familiar compendium of feline facts.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781738945283
Page Count: 143
Publisher: re:books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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
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