Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell (2024) “These things — everlasting flight, a self-galvanizing heart, a baby who learns names in the womb — sound like fables we tell children. But it’s only that the real world is so startling that our capacity for wonder, huge as it is, can barely skim the edges of the truth.” In Katherine Rundell’s newest collection of essays, we are invited to traverse the globe and venture through time to explore 22 of Earth’s endangered species. Matched with a history of how they came to fall on the endangered species list, each of Rundell’s essays highlights the true magic of living things. The Greenland shark slowly moves through the depths of the ocean, some believed to be six centuries old. The raccoon was once a White House pet. Rebecca the raccoon was kept by Calvin Coolidge and left to run free causing mischief while wearing an embroidered collar. The bizarre beauty of the giraffe has confounded humans for ages, who have layered on mystical explanations for how it could come to be, the Roman poet Horace believing it a “a “hybrid monster … half camel, half leopard.” While Rundell spins these enchanting stories of the strange beauty around us, it is very clear that the largest threat to their fragile existence is humanity. She ends her collection with a 23rd animal, The Human. “The greatest lie that humans ever told is that the Earth is ours, and at our disposal. It’s a lie with the power to destroy us all.” Vanishing Treasures is a snapshot of the unimaginable and astonishing beings roaming throughout our world, ones whose beauty is quickly being snuffed out. Rundell’s collection serves as a bestiary and a call to action, to save these creatures while we still can and preserve the singular magic they each bring to life on Earth. Katherine Rundell is the author of many wonderful children’s books. Her previous release, Impossible Creatures, was named the Waterstones Book of the Year in 2023. Dog Days by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, Translated by Janet Hong (2024) Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, 2020 Harvey Award winning author of Grass, reflects on her personal relationship with dogs in her latest graphic novel release, Dog Days. To aid with the grief Gendry-Kim’s partner is experiencing after the death of his grandmother, he decides to adopt a dog from their local pet store. The nervous Carrot, a Welsh corgi, joins their family and starts to win over Gendry-Kim’s heart after the inevitable bumpy start of raising an anxious puppy. The couple decides to move to the country from Seoul to provide more space for Carrot and to ease his anxiety. There they are met with a shift in the cultural perception of dogs. Soon after moving they adopt another dog, Potato, and incorporate him into their home and daily walks through the countryside. They begin to notice a different perspective of dogs in their new home, less the beloved pet they see their dogs as and more of, at best, a nuisance and burden and at worst, livestock. Gendry-Kim’s illustrations are beautifully drawn in black and white with scratchy landscapes and dog portraits, resembling elegant wood cuts. Her reflections, inner conflicts, and reckoning with the world around her is a beautiful and complicated contemplation of home, community, and the role of animals in our lives. No. 132 By Hana Zittel
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