Colorado-based naturalist Childs presents another volume of vignettes, some taken from his 1997 Crossing Paths and other written since then. Each describes an encounter with a non-human animal, among them raccoon, raven, pronghorn antelope, and praying mantis. He has not indexed the collection. Annotation #169;2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Starred Review. In these eloquent essays, naturalist and adventurer Childs (House of Rain) describes some of his extraordinary experiences with creatures from wasps, red-spotted toads and hummingbirds to grizzly bears, coyotes and jaguars. Seeking entrée into animal societies, he interprets messages left in marks on the ground and in scents on leaves and trees, and communicates with animals directly using their own language of stares, gestures, postures, sounds, scents and gaits. He goes looking for animals alone in hazardous wilderness areas tracking mountain goats in Colorado's Gore Range or surprising a secret society of ravens in a canyon in Utah. Always longing to be at one with animals, he is not afraid to climb an aspen to see the world from a porcupine's perspective, run with a herd of elk or wonder how it would feel to jump from a plane and fly with a bald eagle. Childs's captivating essays, rich in sensuous imagery (the porcupine looks like a mop, a bundle of ponderosa pine needles, a mobile hairstyle), are hauntingly beautiful and replete with evocative observations of animal life. 42 b&w illus. (Dec. 12) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

In an evocative series of essays, Childs writes of moments of connection between animal and human: hiking a desert canyon, descending by hand- and foot-holds, and almost stepping on a mountain lion, or finding a raccoon trapped in a desert pool and the epic battle that ensued when Childs rescued it. Sleeping in a tepee with opened flaps and being awakened by the breeze from a hovering hummingbird's wings. Or a praying mantis that crashed a picnic, observing Childs with its bulbous gaze. In lyrical language, Childs places the reader in the moment, and we feel the power of a spotted owl catching a mouse, the drama of an elk herd crashing through the snow, or the swaying of trees in the wind as Childs climbs with a porcupine. A book for dipping into during quiet moments, Childs' essays will teach all comers how to get inside the moment and touch the animals with which we share our planet. Bent, Nancy. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.