"How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals," Sy Montgomery, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, hard cover, 208 pages, illustrated, $20, to be released in September, also as an eBook.
Have you ever felt completely in sync with a pet or other animal? That you knew the animal and, more importantly, it knew you?
Author Sy Montgomery writes about 13 animals with whom she has shared what she describes as that very special feeling.
Montgomery is author of several other books about animals. The stories in this book are taken from her many trips to exotic places to see and interact with exotic animals. There also are a dog and a pig in the stories, exotic for the extraordinary relationship the author establishes.
For true exotics she offers us a Goliath birdeater spider, whose legs can span a human face, not that Montgomery takes the relationship to that point.
These are stories about a variety of creatures linked by the author's deep affection for any creature she encounters. She tells good stories, important perhaps at this time because too many animals need us to feel connected with them, to understand them, and help them survive.
