Talking Tails: The Incredible Connection Between People and Their Pets

by Ann Love, Jane Drake, Bill Slavin (Illustrator)

Overview

From our earliest beginnings, we have shared our lives with animals. Explore the ties that people and their pets have formed from prehistoric times to present day.

With fun and fascinating facts, learn whether you are a Dog Person or a Cat Person, how to pick and care for your pet, and which animals are most closely linked to their wild roots. Discover purebreds and hybrids, rare and unusual pets, horses, birds, fish, guinea pigs, reptiles, and rodents.

Part social history, part "owner manual," Ann Love and Jane Drake present irresistible and heartwarming stories of pets through the ages, complemented by the captivating pen-and-inkwith- watercolor illustrations of artist Bill Slavin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770493599
Publisher:	Tundra
Publication date:	08/14/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	8.09(w) x 10.07(h) x 0.26(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

ANN LOVE and JANE DRAKE, sisters and coauthors, have written many award-winning books, including Yes You Can! Your Guide to Becoming an Activist; Cool Woods: A Trip around the World's Boreal Forest; Snow Amazing: Cool Facts and Warm Tales; Trash Action: A Fresh Look at Garbage; Sweet! The Delicious Story of Candy, winner of the Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award; and Alien Invaders: Species That Threaten Our World. They share a lifelong interest in the environment and the wild, travel extensively, and, through their books and presentations, inspire children to be more observant of the world around them. Ann Love and Jane Drake live in the Toronto area.

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR ALIEN INVADERS:
"This is a highly relevant topic.... A good choice for science enthusiasts and non-fiction readers, this succinct, lucid text makes global ecology palpable."
— Toronto Star


PRAISE FOR SWEET!:
"... A yummy feast.... Sweet! is one tasty treat."
— School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Amusing ink-and-watercolor illustrations from Slavin are integrated into the text of this entertaining look at the history of pet keeping. With information about keeping fish, birds, rodents, horses and ferrets, most of the space is dedicated to cats and dogs. There are several lengthy anecdotes about particular pets-for example, Jasper, a cat that was lost for a year, and Polly, a parrot taken north with the Klondike Gold Rush that survived until 1972. These tales present as fact information that can only be guessed at: e.g., Jasper's experiences while no one cared for him. Unfortunately, there are no source notes, bibliography or recommendations for further reading. There is a timeline along the bottoms of the pages, but it is not to scale: Sometimes a thousand years will pass in an inch; at other times the inch represents just a couple of years. Although picture-book-sized, this effort is text-intensive, making it an unlikely selection for the younger readers and listeners who are most likely to be attracted by its presentation. Lively fun but useful for light reading only. (Nonfiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews

Gr 3–6—Love and Drake explore the topic on 24 spreads such as "A Cat in the Family," "How to Love a Reptile," "Building a Rodent Relationship," and "Puppy Science: Dog Senses." Most spreads focus on pet-ownership requirements, domesticated and feral counterparts, animal behaviors, communication, breeds, and hybrids. Tails concludes with a moving vignette about a girl with epilepsy and her seizure-response canine. The pages are illustrated with mostly subdued, sometimes humorous pen-and-ink and watercolor cartoons. A running time line from 100,000 BC through AD 2009 appears across the bottom of the spreads, succinctly and effectively infusing facts about pet evolution, burial with their owners, aquarium invention, and breed evolution over time. While the text is informative and the topic popular, the artwork is merely adequate and won't appeal to readers old enough to appreciate the text, especially the time line data.—S. McClendon, Friends School of Atlanta, Decatur, GA

School Library Journal