My Family and Other Animals - Hardcover

Durrell, Gerald; Watercolours By Peter Barrett

4.17

55,716 ratings by Goodreads

9780246132451: My Family and Other Animals

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0246132450 ISBN 13: 9780246132451

Publisher: Grafton, 1987

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My Family and Other Animals

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Review:

As a self-described "champion of small uglies," English writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) devoted his life to writing and the preservation of wildlife, from the Mauritius pink pigeon to the Rodriques fruit bat. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the Greek island of Corfu, but ended up as a delightful account of his family's experiences that were, according to him, "rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas."

As a 10-year-old boy, Gerry left England for Corfu with "all those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids." Durrell's descriptions of his family and its many eccentric hangers-on (he stresses that "all the anecdotes about the island and the islanders are absolutely true") are highly entertaining, as is the procession of toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and the Magenpies. This is a lovely book.

About the Author:

Gerald Durrell - naturalist, author, media personality, conservationist and founder of the internationally renowned Jersey Zoo. He was a passionate and persuasive advocate of the need for the conservation of animals and plants and their habitats. A larger than life character, he was a brilliant story-teller in speech and in print.

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