What Species of Creatures
Animal Relations from the New World
9781554200405
Paperback, Trade
English
General Trade
NATURE / Animals / Wildlife
Nov 15, 2008
$19.00 CAD
Active
6 x 9 x 0.65 in
240 pages
New Star Books
The Europeans who colonized North America more than three centuries ago encountered fantastical creatures: flying squirrels, ruby-throated hummingbirds, the easily tamed beaver. Their literature of discovery — by turns comic, cruel, and adulatory — provides a revealing glimpse of the taxonomies they carried with them into their so-called New World. Sharon Kirsch weaves early settler accounts, fables, children's stories, natural histories and 21st century science in a quirky narrative that probes our complicated relationship with the other creatures that share the planet. Illustrated with twenty period drawings, and peppered with verbatim accounts by these early settlers, What Species of Creatures is a rich and satisfying stew of odd historical facts and figures.
Sharon Kirsch lives in Toronto. She is a freelance writer and editor.