"A luxe, full color picture book adaptation of Sy Montgomery and Rebecca Green's New York Times bestselling How to Be a Good Creature"--

National Book Award finalist Sy Montgomery reflects on the personalities and quirks of 13 animals--her friends--who have profoundly affected her in this stunning, poetic, and life-affirming memoir featuring illustrations by Rebecca Green.

Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.

Dream Animal Wisdom comprises the experiences of 22 dreamers and their encounters with personal dream creatures ranging from the domestic and familiar to the wild and mysterious. An inviting entryway to the realm of instinct and embodied energy, this richly detailed book serves as a primer for the novice and encouragement for the experienced dreamworker. Part I focuses on the specific animals most commonly met in dreams, while Part II highlights the ways in which an intriguing variety of creatures appear in order to manifest significant themes. Throughout the book, readers will accompany courageously honest dreamers as they alternately resist, evade, welcome and embrace their animal visitors, ultimately integrating the practical and profound messages their special creatures have come to convey.

A splendid and luminous celebration of one of nature’s most perfect and mysterious creatures—the hawk—from the New York Times bestselling author of the “astoundingly beautiful” (NPR) The Soul of an Octopus. When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone and yet, she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell. Over the next few years, Sy spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts. They are deeply emotional animals, quick to show anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. But they are also loyal and intensely aware of their surroundings. In this mesmerizing account, featuring sixteen pages of gorgeous color photographs, Sy passionately and vividly reveals the wonderous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life, and love.

“King’s Animals’ Best Friends is the most comprehensive exploration I’ve read of the complex relationship between the human and nonhuman, full of great insights and practical information.”—Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times Book Review, “By the Book” Finalist for the 2021 Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature As people come to understand more about animals’ inner lives—the intricacies of their thoughts and the emotions that are expressed every day by whales and cows, octopus and mice, even bees—we feel a growing compassion, a desire to better their lives. But how do we translate this compassion into helping other creatures, both those that are and are not our pets? Bringing together the latest science with heartfelt storytelling, Animals’ Best Friends reveals the opportunities we have in everyday life to help animals in our homes, in the wild, in zoos, and in science labs, as well as those considered to be food. Barbara J. King, an expert on animal cognition and emotion, guides us on a journey both animal and deeply human. We meet cows living relaxed lives in an animal sanctuary—and cows with plastic portals in their sides at a university research station. We observe bison free-roaming at Yellowstone National Park and chimpanzees confined to zoos. We learn with King how to negotiate vegetarian preferences in omnivore restaurants. We experience the touch of a giant Pacific octopus tasting King’s skin with one of his long, neuron-rich arms. We reflect on animal testing as King shares her own experience as the survivor of a particularly nasty cancer. And in a moment all too familiar to many of us, we recover from a close encounter with two spiders in the home. This is a book not of shaming and limitation, but of uplift and expansion. Throughout this journey, King makes no claims of personal perfection. Though an animal expert, she is just like the rest of us: on a journey still, learning each day how to be better, and do better, for animals. But as Animals’ Best Friends makes clear, challenging choices can bring deep rewards. By turning compassion into action on behalf of animals, we not only improve animals’ lives—we also immeasurably enrich our own.

An introduction to the rapidly growing category of New Adult (NA) literature, this text provides a roadmap to understanding and introducing NA books to young people in high school, college, libraries, and other settings. As a window into the experiences and unique challenges that young and new adults encounter, New Adult literature intersects with but is distinct from Young Adult literature. This rich resource provides a framework, methods, and plentiful reading recommendations by genre, theme, and discipline on New Adult literature. Starting with a definition of New Adult literature, Kane demonstrates how the inclusion of NA literature helps support and encourage a love of reading. Chapters address important topics that are relevant to young people, including post-high school life, early careers, relationships, activism, and social change. Each chapter features text sets, instructional strategies, writing prompts, and activities to invite and encourage young people to be reflective and engaged in responding to thought-provoking texts. A welcome text for professors of literacy and literature instruction, first-year college instructors, researchers, librarians, and educators, this book provides new ways to assist students as they embark upon the next stage of their lives and is essential reading for courses on teaching literature.