|summary=As a child Ellie Laks was abused, but not only did she suffer at the hands of her abuser, she also had to endure parental indifference to what was happening to her. Her only relief came through animals - and even then she had to cope when the animals were taken from her. As an adult she discovered that she had a real talent for healing animals - and that they helped her to heal too. In a brilliant leap of intuition she realised that if the animals could help her to heal they could do the same for others and so the Gentle Barn was born - a place where animals were brought as a place of safety and where disadvantaged children and special needs groups could use as therapy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584883</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Fogden, Marianne Taylor and Sheri L Williamson
|title=Hummingbirds: A Life-Size Guide to Every Species
|rating=4.5
|genre=Reference
|summary=I've always been fascinated by hummingbirds - delicate, colourful, beautifully and brilliantly adapted to extract nectar from flowers. Perhaps most of all for me it's their acrobatic flight - the ability to hover and manoeuvre which has me hooked: I could watch them for hours, amazed that birds whose weight can only meaningfully be given in ounces can do so much. I was drawn to this book as soon as I saw it, for a number of reasons.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782400893</amazonuk>
}}
|summary=If you love dogs this book is an absolute gem. It's not going to explain to you how to feed or train your dog. There's no advice on first aid or when you should seek advice from the vet. What you get are seventy two essays on subjects which dog lovers ponder on, each one just two or three pages long and written in terms which the layman can understand. I've opened the book at random and found 'Why Do Dogs Touch Noses?', 'Do Dogs Recognize Themselves in a Mirror?' and 'Why Do Puppies Sleep in a Pile?' There's nothing there that you absolutely ''have'' to know so that you can keep a dog as he should be kept but by the time that you've finished you will know him a lot better.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393338126</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marianne Taylor and Andrew Perris
|title=Beautiful Owls: Portraits of Arresting Species from Around the World
|rating=4
|genre=Pets
|summary=Owls are strange birds: because they're crepuscular and twilight isn't the best time for ''seeing'' birds with any clarity they tend to be the stuff of legend and we don't know as much about them as we might. On the other hand, they're the most recognisable of birds, perhaps because of the forward-facing eyes and would look almost human if it was not for that uncanny ability to swivel the neck to almost 360°. Marianne Taylor has gone some way towards correcting this lack of knowledge in ''Beautiful Owls''. She gives us an overview of the species, traces them back to the earliest civilisations and shows their evolution.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005971</amazonuk>
}}
|summary=Melissa Wareham was ''convinced'' that she must be adopted: how could someone like her who ''loved'' dogs have been born to parents who, well, wouldn't have them in the house? She wasn't even that convinced when her mother produced her birth certificate. Melissa wouldn't be able to have a dog until she had a home of her own but in the meantime she got a job at Battersea Dogs' Home and it was there that she met Gus. He wasn't in the first flush of youth and his breath was a weapon of mass destruction, but he and Melissa bonded and when he was very poorly - he had kennel cough - she took him home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849418179</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jill Hucklesby
|title=Little Lost Hedgehog (RSPCA Fiction)
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Grace Fallon was out in her garden one evening, doing what she did every night - making certain that her pet rabbits were fed, watered and safe. When she saw a movement in the flower bed she went to investigate and found a baby hedgehog - or a hoglet as they're correctly called. Wisely she didn't attempt to touch the animal but told her parents and then kept watch from inside the house. When the hoglet reappeared and looked rather distressed her mother rang the RSPCA and was told to give it some food - dog food and crushed dog biscuits (NEVER milk as it can make any hog very sick). Later someone from the RSPCA came round to collect the hoglet and take it to their centre for care.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407133217</amazonuk>
}}
|summary=Jill Abramson had a dog whom she adored - a White West Highland by the name of Buddy - and after his death she wasn't certain that she wanted another dog. Would she bond with the newcomer? Would she always be comparing the pup with his predecessor? But - times change - and in 2009 Jill and her husband Henry brought home a Golden Retriever by the name of Scout. Over the following year Abramson wrote a column about raising Scout for the New York Times website and it's this column which forms the basis for 'The Puppy Diaries: Living With a Dog Named Scout'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444720635</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Barnes
|title=How to be a BAD Birdwatcher
|rating=4.5
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=''Look out of the window.''<br>
''See a bird''<br>
''Enjoy it.''<br>
''Congratulations. You are now a birdwatcher.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720866</amazonuk>
}}
I'm so pleased I read this book. It's only the occasional writer who grabs me by the short and curlies with his observation of human nature, but accomplished children's writer Matt Whyman not only grabbed me, but sold me on the mini-pigs as well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444711466</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gordon Grice
|title=The Book of Deadly Animals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Animals and humans have long mixed, even though the one has almost always proven capable of being lethal to the other. Many scientists in the past decided animals killing humans were aberrant, and that the real animal knew it was second best to humans, having been saved in the Ark, and respected our dominion over them. Even now, it seems, there are opinions that creatures attacking mankind are somehow rogue and need destroying. But where is the wrong in an animal behaving as its nature compels it? Similarly, the human wandering around the wilderness, or even the idiot woman feeding a black bear her own toddler's honey-dripping hand (true story - what the bear thought of the taste of honeyed fingers we don't know) is just the same in reverse - humans behaving as only humans can.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919675</amazonuk>
}}
