Best Of 2011

Photo Courtesy of Animal Planet

This time of year everyone is coming up with their "Best Of" Lists, so not to be outdone, here at Books and Beasts we're offering our choices too.  If you follow the blog, you know that I've reviewed a lot of books and a few movies -- I'm pretty selective in what I include, so everything that I covered is there because I thought it was worth checking out -- even the books I had problems with.  However, even among the best, a few stand out.  So here are my choices for the best animal related offerings of the past year.

1.      Best Fiction -- Again, I've reviewed a lot of great novels and short story collections and all of them are worth your time.  However, there is one novel that stands out this past year among all the rest.  Possum Summer, by Jen K. Bloom is a wonderful children's book that will speak to child in the heart of every reader.  It's the kind of book I loved when I was a kid, and still do.  You can read my review of it here, but you might as well save yourself the time and just rush out and get it.  Not to be missed.

2.      Best Nonfiction -- Same caveat, all the books I've reviewed are important, useful and entertaining (in different combinations, depending on what they were).  But if I have to pick one that most affected me this year, it would be Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean.  Wonderful portrait of the dog so famous that when he died they broke into radio broadcasts around the country to announce it.  You can read my review here, but please, get this book, and pass it on to all your dog loving friends.

3.      Best Movie --  This one's easy.  (I haven't seen War Horse yet, but as soon as I do it'll show up here on the blog).  The best animal movie of the year -- and one of the best I've seen in a very long time -- is Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Yes, it's true, I love it in part because I'm a geek, and there are scenes of Apes running wild through the city and attacking helicopters.  But this is much more intelligent, thoughtful and accurate movie than I ever expected.  The writers obviously did extensive research on chimps raised in captivity, and Caesar -- played by Andy Serkis in a performance that would be nominated for an Oscar if there was any justice in the world -- is the most realistic chimpanzee character ever captured on film.  (Sorry, Cheetah.)  Emotionally, technically, and intellectually the best movie of the year.

The Worst -- I don't usually include a section on "worst" in my blog -- I prefer to use time and space pointing out what's best, and what's important.  But one blog post I wrote this year Tears for Elephants has drawn more hits than anything else I've written.  It's about the sad fate of elephants in Hollywood, including the ones who starred in Water for Elephants.  I gave that book an enthusiastic review, because I think it's great -- but I boycotted the movie, sadly, because I think it could have been great too.  There have been a number of movies this year -- including Hangover 2, Zookeeper, and the new We Bought a Zoo, that made the unfortunate choice of using exotic, wild animals -- a practice that contributes to the abuse, over hunting, and endangerment of these creatures.  You can see my thoughts about it in earlier reviews, but it only makes my Best Movie choice even more notable.  The totally CGI apes in "Rise" are wonderful creations.

4.      Best TV Show -- I haven't reviewed this one yet in the blog, but it's too good not to include.  There are lots of great nature and animal shows on TV, but this one is the best if you're an animal lover -- especially if you're a dog lover -- absolutely if you're a Pit Bull lover. It also happens to be hands down the best reality show going: Pit Bulls and Parolees on Animal Planet. (This is the new favorite show of my canine housemate Lulubelle Dawg, who was also a big fan of Meercat Manner back in the day.) In this day and age, just the idea was audacious.  Let's take two of the most stigmatized groups we can think of, and then let's make an honest, sympathetic, non-sensationalized show about them.  If you've never seen it, the show follows Tia, the woman who runs Villalobos ranch, a rescue facility for pit bulls.  She is helped by her daughters -- who have had difficult lives in their own ways -- and by the parolees she takes on as volunteers.  I don't know of another show on television that deals with second chances, heartbreak, triumph and joy more often.  Oh yeah, and there are Pit Bulls!  What more could you want? 

Well, those are my choices for 2011.  I'd love to hear your thoughts or picks, whether you agree with me or not.  And I look forward to continuing to bring you reviews and information about the wide world of "Books and Beasts".

Readers of Birds and Beasts might also enjoy our sister blog Birdland West, which covers birds and wildlife, mostly in the Seattle Area.

Possum Summer

Possum Summer by Jen K. Blom

 

I love possums.  And I do realize that not everyone does.  ("They look like rats," is what most people say -- a comparison that isn't really fair to possums or rats.) When I started volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center a couple of years ago, the possums quickly became my favorites.  Sure, the baby squirrels and raccoons are cuter -- but raccoons are hooligans and squirrels can't be trusted.  Give me a quiet, civilized possum any day.

At my volunteer orientation the trainer said something that really stuck with me:  If you see a possum by the side of the road, you should always check, even if it is obviously dead.  Possums are marsupials -- mothers carry their young in a pouch, like a kangaroo.  So a female possum that's been hit by a car, for instance, could still have live babies in her pouch.  I have, more than once since then, pulled my car over to side of the road and braved traffic to check on the body of dead possum.  So far, I haven't found any babies.

So when I heard about Jen K. Blom's new novel Possum Summer I knew I had to read it.   The heroine of the book is eleven year old P (short for Princess, a name she hates), and she does find a baby possum.  When she takes her dad's cattle dog out into the woods without permission the dog kills a possum, and P rescues the surviving baby.  Feeling responsible for his mother's death, she makes a promise to raise him until he is able to live on his own.

But  P's not allowed to have pets.  Her father , who is serving in Iraq, believes that every animal on a farm must pull its weight.  Still, P is a girl who believes in keeping promises, no matter what.  She's already working hard to keep her promise to her father, to take care of the farm while he's away.  So there's no way she's going to let her new little possum friend -- who names Isaac -- down.

In a time when children's fiction seems to be increasingly full of heavy grown up problems on one side and vampires and other supernatural creatures on the other, Possum Summer takes us back to an earlier kind of children's book.  It's the kind of book that I would have loved as a kid and it's a pleasure to discover that I can still enjoy it very much. 

P's world is the farmland of western Oklahoma, and she is the kind of stubborn, tomboyish heroine we expect.  The tone reminds me strongly of books like Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows.  (Even Charlotte's Web -- although none of the animals talk.)

This is the kind of children's story where the children inhabit a world almost entirely their own.  Where every adult is peripheral and long summer days go on forever. (The adults are so peripheral here that their story threads are all pretty much left hanging -- which doesn't seem at all wrong.)

 Indeed that sense of childhood timelessness is so strong in Possum Summer that P and her farm feel more than a little anachronistic.  Though she is surrounded by the modern world, she is not of the modern world.  (I must admit that I have a hard time believing there is a twelve year old anywhere in the developed world who doesn't have at least a workable knowledge of the internet).  Her best friend is a computer geek, but P herself is never even seen watching TV.  Her room, we are told, is littered with books, but she doesn't tell us what they are, and we never see her reading them.  She does have a wonderful Lookbook -- a journal in which she writes and sketches about her day's adventures.  And her passion is totally for the farm, the animals, and the Oklahoma countryside.

But in the best children's fiction that world of childhood is never totally undisturbed.  The tensions and dangers of the adult world run just beneath the surface like one of those peaceful, pleasant dreams where we feel a constant tug of dark anxiety.  In the case of Possum Summer it comes from the financial problems of farmers, an outbreak of rabies that is threatening local animals, and above all from P's father, who has been injured in Iraq and whose relationship with both his daughters is severely strained.  Much of the strength of P's character comes from her struggle to measure up to her father's standards -- to keep the promises she made to him -- and at the same time be true to her own nature, which is very different from his.

I have to say, since this an animal-centered blog, that for animal lovers Possum Summer is both wonderful and heartbreaking. The beauty and harshness of life get equal weight. There are a couple of emotionally wrenching scenes and a climax that is, literally (at least for me) breathtaking.

Ultimately, everyone has to leave the world of childhood.  Not all at once, but in a series of steps, each of which can carry a heavy price.  Possum Summer is about the time in one girl's life when she takes several very large steps toward the responsibilities of growing up.  She meets them in the end with courage and unfailing love.

(Note:  Possum Summer is also wonderfully illustrated by Omar Rayyan.  If I had seen his drawings of the baby possum Isaac when I was young, I would have fallen in love with the species years before.  You can check out more of his delightful work here.)

Readers of Birds and Beasts might also enjoy our sister blog Birdland West, which covers birds and wildlife, mostly in the Seattle Area.