Dogs Have the Strangest Friends : Other True Stories of Animal Feelings

With stories of the mother cat who saves her kittens from fire to the parrot who says "I'm sorry" when appropriate, this book provides a collection of true life tales about animals that supports the notion that they possess feelings not too unsimilar to that of humans.

Grade 3-5-More than a dozen stories have been collected as examples of some unusual animals that displayed very human characteristics. Whether the author is telling about Freddie the Fly, who developed a bond with a man, or illustrating the friendship of a 600-pound bear and a tiny kitten, he relates the incidents in human terms. For example, when talking about a baby elephant that was saved by its mother from a flooding river, he writes, "Elephant mothers seem to love their babies as much as human mothers love theirs." For the fly, he remarks "The fly, I venture to say, trusted him-we might even say that the fly liked being with the man-." These views on the feelings of animals are one-sided, unscientific, and simplistic. While the occasional watercolor paintings are lovely, the writing throughout is sappy and often condescending. Source notes are included for each incident.
Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Setting the tone for these stories-cum- animal-rights agenda, Masson's long-winded introduction posits that animals "have nearly all the feelings we do, and maybe even some that we don't." Drawing primarily from published works, including his books for adults (When Elephants Weep; Dogs Never Lie About Love), Masson describes intriguing friendships between various species, animals' acts of courage and compassion and other incidents revealing a range of animal emotions. Throughout, the author offers personal, often highly speculative interpretations (e.g., after discussing elephants' well-documented interest in elephant bones, he writes, "I think they are trying to figure out why humans kill elephants for their tusks"). He is given to rambling, sometimes fatuous musings (for instance, writing of two adult peregrine falcons whose father was temporarily unable to feed them in their youth, he says: "Probably they now knew what hunger meant and would never allow their children to go hungry. Or so I like to think"). While many will agree with his politics (he's vegetarian, anti-fur and anti-animal testing), the arguments are presented without balance ("Does this poor planet really need another kind of floor polish, one of the many products tested on animals?"). The most effective element here is the least heavy-handed: Felts's (The Blue Whale) tender, softly focused watercolors of animals in their native habitats. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An elephant tries to help a trapped baby hippo, a grizzly bear shares food with a kitten, a parrot apologizes for misbehavior. Drawing anecdotes from his previous books When Elephants Weep (1995) and Dogs Never Lie about Love (1997), as well as other sources, Masson has assembled a collection that will amaze, amuse, and touch with evidence that animals are capable of more than loyalty and tolerance. Although some of these incidents (a fly that took up riding about on a writer's fingertip) may inspire skepticism, Masson provides source notes for most of the accounts, and claims that three of the incidents have even been caught on film. Shirley Felt's bland, distant watercolors don't add the visual dimension that a few well-chosen photos might have, and the author has a tendency to end his tales on a treacly note. Even so, Masson rightly warns against interpreting animal behavior in strictly human terms, seldom anthropomorphizes, and expresses his animal rights convictions in vigorous but not polemical terms. John Peters