HV Library Features Books About Animals

An Excerpt of the Monthly Library Update from the Homestead Village Library Committee

By Mark Johnson

This month, we take a brief journey into the world of the winged, the fanged and the four-legged. Allow me to play the role of Marlin Perkins as we tour the Homestead library’s not-so-wild kingdom of animals.

This detour was inspired by two of our many recently donated books. First up is West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge, a fictionalized account of a 1938 cross-country road trip to deliver two giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. The man leading the trek and a teenage boy who gains his trust deal with an array of obstacles as they work to keep the critters safe and healthy.

Rutledge was well prepared to tell the story, having worked as a travel writer and written a biography of the zoo’s former director. It was there that she discovered a trove of clippings about the actual trip, inspiring her 2021 novel.

The second recent donation was My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me by Caleb Carr, a rare memoir about cats – rarer still in that it was penned not by some “cat lady” but by an accomplished male author. Carr, best-selling author of “The Alienist” and other books, recounts his lifelong connection to cats stemming from a brutal childhood. The “monster” at the center of this book was an ornery Siberian mountain cat who quickly bonded with Carr, at one point even defending him from a bear. (A question for fellow cat lovers: When’s the last time your fur baby attacked anything more dangerous than its food bowl?)

There’s at least one other cat book in our collection. In Mala’s Cat: A Memoir of Survival in World War II, Mala Kacenberg recounts hiding in a Polish forest to escape the Nazis and bonding with a stray cat who follows her.

I also found three works about dogs: a little holiday-themed novel called A Dog’s Perfect Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron; a collection of photos and essays from a variety of writers called Gone Dogs: Tales of Dogs We Loved, edited by Jim Mitchem and Laurie Smithwick; and a fun coffee table book, The Year of the Dogs by Vincent J. Musi. The last can be found in the display case by the desk and, with its gorgeous and amusing photos, is guaranteed to keep your great grandchildren entertained for, oh, a good 10 minutes at least. Another oversized book worth a peek is The Sporting Horse: In Pursuit of Equine Excellence by Nicola Jane Swinney, which can be found in the nonfiction area.

The humble donkey is also well represented. In Smart Ass: How a Donkey Challenged Me to Accept His True Nature & Rediscover My Own, field geologist Margaret Winslow works through a midlife crisis with lessons from an unlikely teacher. Giving Winslow a run for her money for most unwieldy subtitle is Running With Sherman: How a Rescue Donkey Inspired a Rag-tag Gang of Runners to Enter the Craziest Race in America by Lancaster County author Christopher McDougall.

We have at least three books about birds of prey, starting with What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman and Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght. The third book is one of the most celebrated in our menagerie: H is for Hawk by British author Helen Macdonald, who trained a goshawk following her father’s death and produced an award-winning memoir.

I spoke earlier of four-legged animals, but let’s not forget the eight-legged. The novel Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt features an octopus that lives up to the title. Hannah Mumby, who studies the behavior of animals and their relationships with humans, covers another remarkable and intelligent animal in Elephants: Birth, Life, and Death in the World of the Giants, a book worth picking up if only for the stunning cover photo.

Let’s wrap up our tour with a few final selections: Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses by Jackie Higgins, hailed as a “masterpiece of science and nature writing” by The Washington Post; The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us About Love, Life, and Mortality by Massachusetts vet Karen Fine; and Horse by Geraldine Brooks, a superb work of historical fiction centering on a 19th-century thoroughbred.