Review

A bestiary is a medieval collection of stories providing physical and allegorical descriptions of real or imaginary animals along with an interpretation of the moral significance of each animal was thought to embody. A modern version of such a collection. (The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition). British author Katherine Rundell, a fellow of St. Catherine's College, Oxford employs this framework to underscore the "astonishing" and "miraculous" world we live in by taking the reader on a tour of the world's awe-inspiring animals now facing extinction. With illustrations by Tayla Baldwin, she makes this tour highly interesting and impactful along with a plea to take notice of these wonders and do our part in saving these creatures. She notes that the common swift flies about 1.2 million miles in its life, for at least 10 months a year, it never stops flying, sleeping on the wing it has no need to land. The American Wood Frog gets through the winter by allowing itself to freeze solid. Its heart slows, then stops, and the water around its organs turn to ice. It thaws in the spring and the heart kick-starts itself into life. No one understands how this happens. Dolphins whistle to their young in the womb for months before birth and for two weeks afterward. Other dolphins are quieter so as not to confuse the unborn calf as it learns its mother's call. Wombats are anything but streamlined (see book cover) but they can run up to 25 mph and maintain that for 90 seconds. The fastest recorded human speed was Usain Bolt's 27.8 mph in a 100-meter race in 2009, maintained for less than 2 seconds. Hedgehogs, which I saw when playing golf in Scotland years ago, have about 6,000 hollow spines and, when threatened, roll into an impenetrable ball. They mate upright on their kind legs, belly to belly, to avoid each other's spines. There are 22 animal stories like these in the book--hermit crab, bear, Greenland shark, elephant, lemur, stork, tuna, and more, all of which make for great reading and a clarion call for paying attention to the world around us--and doing something about it.

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