Bestseller. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019, guest edited by Sy, hit three regional indie bestseller lists its first week out this year: Pacific Northwest, Southern California, and the South.

Good Reviews all around:

• Booklist has given The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019, guest edited by Sy, a starred review in their October 1 issue, saying: “The works in this annual anthology are lyrical, emotional, moving, and insightful—proof that long-form science journalism boasts some of our best writers …. These pieces challenge us to look deeper and to understand better, to see the beating human heart in the soul of science.”
• The Washington Post praises The Magnificent Migration written for older children by the peerless wildlife writer Sy Montgomery.”
• Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado is celebrating its 35th year as a vibrant, thoughtful independent bookstore by listing their favorite books of the last 35 years. The Soul of an Octopus is on it, as well as many other excellent books. Check out the list.

Noble Dreams is a new podcast that charts “a world of exploration, invitation, conversation, nearly pure imagination, musication.” Sy enjoyed her talk with Noah Chute. Listen here.

Missed out on rats who peek-a-boo and roosters who cock-a-doodle-doo?

Missed out on rats who peek-a-boo and roosters who cock-a-doodle-doo? Here’s the link to Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s midday talk show on WGBH radio last Wednesday. The Afternoon Zoo — that’s Sy of course — starts at 1:58:39

The thoughts of a fish. The Soul of an Octopus. Sy joined her friend Jonathan Balcombe, author of What A Fish Knows on WWDB’s radioshow, The Other Animals. Listen to a podcast of the show here.

Sy Montgomeryova returns to the Czech Republic. A new Czech translation of The Soul of an Octopus (above) will join the 2001 translation of Journey of the Pink Dolphins. The Czech title is Do Octopuses Have a Soul?

Earlier this year Sy had the great pleasure and challenge of selecting stories for The Best American Science and Writing 2019. In advance of its October publication, Publishers Weekly has given the anthology a good review:

Naturalist Montgomery (How to Be a Good Creature) emphasizes a sense of wide-eyed wonder in this enjoyable anthology. Included are topical pieces such as Linda Villarosa’s investigation into African-American infant mortality rates and Rebecca Mead’s report on a transgender woman undergoing facial surgery. But overall, this collection of 26 essays—from such publications as the Atlantic, Atlas Obscura, the New Yorker, and Pacific Standard—is less concerned with the hot-button issues, such as the rise of artificial intelligence, much discussed in contemporary science writing. There are stories about catching insects in Denmark, tracing hydrocarbon gasses at ancient oracle sites in and near Greece, and hunting down the elusive forms of life in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Often the writing strikes a personal, emotional note: Conor Gearin muses about his upcoming marriage while walking in Iowa’s Hitchcock Nature Center, and Molly Osberg tells of her near-fatal experience with a rare form of strep. Endangered animals (vaquita porpoises in the Gulf of California, right whales in Cape Cod Bay, and rhinos in Cincinnati Zoo) also claim much of the contributors’ attehttp://bit.ly/cw_MagMigrationntion. Readers in need of some substantive escapism will appreciate this offering of the previous year’s finest science and nature writing.

Sy enjoyed talking about The Magnificent Migration with BYU radio. Listen here.

The Unleashed Octopus. Sy loved talking about octos with Creta Pullen and Amanda Eichstaedt, hosts of “Off Leash” on KWMR radio in West Marin, California. Listen here. Sy’s interview starts 1:01:25.

The Chinese edition of How to be a Good Creature is out.

Talkin’ Critters. Sy enjoyed talking to Laura Knoy on NHPR. Listen here or read the transcript.

How to be a Good Creature gets the IMAX treatment. Sy spoke about her book at the New England Aquarium’s IMAX theater. Watch her talk here.

Inky’s Amazing Escape has been nominated for a Ladybug Picture Book Award, at the Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library.

The further – further — adventures of Heidi, the best friend of turtles everywhere. Heidi, age 10, has raised another $800 for sea turtle rescue and rehab. (See the entry below in August and September 2018 when she raised $1500.) Heidi loves sea turtles. She’s upset that we don’t treat turtles better. When she talks we all listen. Heidi and her oldest sister Lilly (and Mom, Dad and Sy) went to the New England Aquarium to present a check to the aquarium’s veterinarian Dr. Charlie Innis. Heidi & Co. were received like royalty and allowed behind-the-scenes visits with an octopus, snakes and other good creatures.

The Gnu Crew: Roger Wood, Dick Estes, Sy, Logan Wood & Elizabeth Marshall ThomasThe Gnu Crew, (almost) all together again: Roger Wood, Dick Estes, Sy, Logan Wood and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas celebrated Sy’s new book The Magnificent Migration at The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Saturday. Thanks to the more than 100 friends who joined us. And to the woman in the background whose hard work is its own Gnu Testament, Runi Estes. (Photo by Lysa Leland.)

Beeindruckend! Sy’s book, Vom Magischen Leuchten des Glühwürmchens bei Mitternacht —From the Magical Glow of Fireflies at Midnight, the retitled German edition of The Wild Out Your Window, is shortlisted for a German Science Book of the Year Prize. If you want to vote for it, here’s the website.

Talking about Good Creatures. Sy thanks Heather Goldstone, for her wonderful conversations with guests on Living Lab radio on WGBH yesterday! Folks can hear the whole show here. Sy joins the show at the 34.49 mark. And she also enjoyed talking about the book on WBYU in Utah.

Shark Fever: The Lore of the Great White. Fear of sharks spiked last summer on Cape Cod after a great white shark fatally bit a 26-year-old surfer. While we have a higher risk of getting hit by lightning than killed by a great white shark, people are agitated about sharks. On the Colin McEnroe show, Sy joins George Burgess, Director Emeritus, Florida Program for Shark Research and Curator Emeritus of the International Shark Attack File, and Greg Johnson, a teacher, musician and lifeguard at Nauset Beach in Orleans, Mass. Listen here.

Happy BioBlitz Birthday, E. O. Wilson. (His real birthday was June 10.) Get a load of that cake: the one time you put an ant on a cake on purpose. Thank you to all who organized yesterday’s celebration, especially BioBlitz founder, author, naturalist Peter Alden —and thank you Lysa Leland for these great photos.

Hyena Defenders. Is The Lion King fair to hyenas? To ask the question is to answer it. Reporter Jimmy Gutierrez, a friend of all hyenas everywhere, asks Sy to examine Disney’s dissing of hyenas. Listen here around the 10-minute mark.

Sy has just learned the audiobook she read for How to be a Good Creature won an Audiobook Earphone Award — back in January! Many thanks to Kenny Pappaconstantinou at Elephant Audiobooks who did the recording.

Sy is in Ecuador with Deb and Patrick Joyce, meeting pelicans, frigate birds and blue footed boobies above, sea turtles, butterfly fish and mobula rays below, and dolphins on the surface between. They are working on a new book about the scientists who study manta rays. (Thank you for the photos, Patrick.)

Sy enjoyed talking about How to Be a Good Creature with Marcus Smith, host of Constant Wonder on BYU radio. Listen here

For the hate of dogs. We treat pet dogs with such sentimentality while their wild, endangered relatives are feared and persecuted. Why? Read Sy’s article on wild dholes in Aeon.

Summer, “the season of beach days and barbecues, kayaking and catnapping, hammocks and homemade popsicles. Maybe you’ll be headed to the lake or a tucked-away cottage, even a tent pitched in the backyard. Wherever you go, go prepared. Sunscreen is a must. Bottles of water essential. And never, ever forget to bring a book,” says The New York Times. And one of those books, says the Times, should be How to be a Good Creature.

Sy recently visited the year-old Matschie’s tree kangaroo, Ecki, who was born at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Thanks, Lisa Dabek, for introducing Sy, and to Ecki’s wonderful keepers, too.

Sy is honored to have been chosen by Antioch New England’s Environmental Studies Department as the winner of this year’s Environmental Excellence Award. Sy thanked Antioch’s students and teachers for all they do for the environment. You can watch the short video.

Thank you, young readers of Everett, WA, for such a fun morning talking about animals at your fabulous library (with its awesome fish tank).

Up Next: Manta Rays. In June Sy will be joining an expedition off Peru which is studying these beautiful creatures.

Three cities in three days! Highlights of Sy’s German book tour included meeting and following rheas (yes, rheas– giant flightless birds from South America!) who live wild just outside city limits of Lubek; attending the largest literature festival in Europe, LitCologne, with mystery writer Donna Leon, where 700 attended our reading; and hanging out with Donna and bovine, caprine and equine fans for a photo shoot for Stern magazine.

The Magic Glow of Fireflies at Midnight

Another boon from Sy’s recent tour in Germany: celebrating publication of yet another of her books in German translation. The Curious Naturalist: Nature’s Everyday Mysteries has become The Magic Glow of Fireflies at Midnight with fresh, new art by Tine Pagenberg.

How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals has been selected as a notable book in the children’s category of the 2018 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. Since 1991 this award has honored the legacy of Sigurd Olson, who attended Northland College and is the namesake of the College’s environmental institute, by recognizing writers who seek to carry on his tradition of nature writing.

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Sy’s favorite bookstore is nearby. The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, N.H., is a thriving independent bookstore. Sy loves to read at the Toadstool because there will be a large turnout and thoughtful questions.

Willard Williams, who opened the Toadstool in 1972, told the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in an interview about the many writers who have visited his store:

Q: Over the years, what was the most memorable speaker and how did the audience respond to them?

A: I don’t want to slight anybody who didn’t, but certainly our most successful ones were Howard Mansfield and Sy Montgomery. They’re a couple who live in Hancock, and they’ve each written different kinds of books. Both of them, they’re lots of fun and lots of people come to hear them, too. They give great presentations….

Thank you Willard for such a vibrant, important part of our community.

The “creature a l’intelligence extraordinaire.” The paperback of the French edition will be published in April.

Thank you Donna Leon. The author of the bestselling and beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series is a fan of The Soul of an Octopus. For the German edition, she said: “Fantastic animal, fantastic book.” And in the New York Times Book Review she said that Sy’s octopus book is “a dream.”

Inky’s Amazing Escape: How a Very Smart Octopus Found His Way Home has been nominated for a Black-Eyed Susan Book Award by the Maryland Association of School Librarians.

The Hyena Scientists has been selected as a finalist for the 2019 Animal Behavior Society’s Outstanding Children’s Book Award. Children will review the finalists and choose a winner.

What do Animals Think and Feel? Sy joined a panel of experts on The Agenda, a Canadian current affairs program that tackles big issues each week. Watch it here.

As someone who travels a great deal, and has gotten lost more than she’d like, Sy was rooting for Huck, a small steer, just a week old, to find his way out of the woods. Huck’s Way Home is a charming illustrated children’s book by Kristina Rodanas about Huck’s adventures on his journey back to the Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock, Vermont. Welcome home Huck.

In his day Christopher Hogwood loved to bust out of his pen and see the neighborhood. That pig is still travelling. The Good Good Pig – which stars Mr. Hogwood – is now in its 19th printing. There are more than 115,000 copies of the paperback in print.

Tamed and Untamed is included in a recently published wiki: Works of Non-Fiction That Are Perfect for Animal Lovers. Take a look at the books on the list here. “Founded in 2011, Ezvid Wiki was the world’s first video wiki, and is now among the top 3,000 websites in the United States,” say the folks at this Wiki.

Go Team Hyena. The Hyena Scientist has been selected as an American Library Association Notable Book.

Sy enjoyed talking to John Klyce on his recent podcast Lending Nature a Hand. Listen here.

Sy is back from “the land where deer bark and dogs whistle.” Read about her time at the Earthwatch research site in Thailand. And check out those sporty leech socks that Sy and her fellow researchers are wearing. (And note this sockless dhole.)

How to Be a Good Creature is number 8 on the Boston Globe Bestseller list

With some new translations soon to be published, The Soul of an Octopus will be available in 13 languages, including, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Romanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

Watching Wolves. Everyone has a favorite animal. John’s favorite is the wolf. He tells Sy that you can learn about wolves by watching their wolf ways here. Thank you John and your teacher, Rachel Martin, for this suggestion.

Besties. How to Be a Good Creature is on these lists of the best books of 2018: Brain Pickings, Good Morning America, The Washington Post, PRI’s Living on Earth, Brain Pickings, BookPage, The Fold Magazine, BookRiot (best book covers), Cascadia Weekly, Ageist, Iowa Public Radio, GirlBoss, Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, AskMen, Albany Times-Union, Idaho Press-Reader, Bmore Art Journal, Eugene Weekly, Marco Eagle, New Hampshire Union-Leader, WickedLocal Cohasset, Simple Chic Everyday, NPR-affiliate KJZZ (Phoenix), Away to Garden, Northshire Books, One More Page Books, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Coast Outer Banks, Quail Ridge Books, Little Professor Books, The Book Jam, Left Bank Books, Eight Cousins, Camp Kansas City, and Booksmith.

In January Sy will join an Earthwatch expedition studying wild dogs in Thailand. Here’s what she wrote for Earthwatch:

Nearly 36 years ago, wombats changed my life.

After five years working as a science journalist at a daily newspaper, my father gave me the gift of my dreams: a plane ticket to Australia. I’d always wanted to go. No other land boasts so many marsupials – mammals whose tiny, undeveloped young, and sweet belly pockets to hold them, had fascinated me since childhood. But what to do once I got there? I discovered Earthwatch, and joined an expedition with Brookfield Zoo’s respected research biologist, Dr. Pamela Parker, studying the underground lives of the southern hairy-nosed wombat at Blanchetown Conservation Park in South Australia.

A lot of our work involved counting fecal pellets. But I could not have been more riveted by the work. I loved the outback. I loved the animals. I loved the science. I loved falling asleep in my tent with the smell of eucalypt smoke in my hair, and waking to sunrises streaked with flocks of pink and grey parrots.

At the end of our two weeks together, Dr. Parker told me she wished I could come back — though she couldn’t hire me, or even pay my way if I wanted to volunteer again. But if I ever wanted to come study any animals at the park, she said, I’d always be welcome at her camp, and she would give me food.

So I quit my job and moved to a tent in the outback.

This is how I began a career off the beaten track. Since then, I’ve swum with piranhas, pink dolphins and electric eels in the Amazon, hiked the Altai mountains of Mongolia looking for snow leopards, and worked in a pit with 18,000 snakes. In Borneo, I’ve been undressed by a curious orangutan. In New Guinea, I helped radio collar tree kangaroos. In French Guyana, I held my (first) wild tarantula. I’ve been hunted by a swimming tiger, chased by a silverback gorilla, and embraced by several giant Pacific octopuses — and meanwhile written 25 books on animals and nature for adults and children, thousands of articles, and scripts for National Geographic TV. I’ve never looked back.

But all this time, I have ever been grateful to Earthwatch. And not just for that first expedition. In the ensuing decades, research for several of my books (including the one with the 18,000 snakes) has intersected with Earthwatch teams.

And now, to my delight, I am heading out with Earthwatch again. Thanks to a generous Earthwatch Communications Fellowship, this January I am looking forward to joining an Earthwatch team on the expedition Tracking Asiatic Wild Dogs in Thailand with principal investigators Drs. Ronglarp Sukmasuang and Nucharin Songsasen in Khao Yai National Park.

Asiatic wild dogs, also known as dholes, are one of the world’s most endangered canids, and also one of the most enigmatic. Red-coated and bushy-tailed, they look a bit like foxes. But other than their appearance, they are nothing like our familiar vulpines — or any other dog on Earth.

Dholes don’t bark, yip or howl. They whistle. They thrive among leopards, bears, and tigers. They can run 45 miles per hour, leap seven feet into the air (to get their bearings as they hunt!), and are excellent swimmers.

But despite their rarity, in many areas, dholes are considered pests. I’m honored to be able to work on a team that will help figure out how much food and room these whistling dogs need to survive, and how best to protect them.

Sy will be sharing the experience by posting blogs from the field. She can’t wait to tell you about her adventure.

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People Magazine picks How to Be a Good Creature as one of the best new books of the year.

The Hyena Scientist has been chosen for this year’s Kirkus Reviews Best Books list.

How to Be a Good Creature is back on The New York Times Monthly Science Bestseller list at number 6.

Best Book Cover. Take a bow Rebecca Green for your fine work on the cover of How to Be a Good Creature. Book Riot has chosen it as one of the best book covers of the year.

Take at look at what the first bookstore customer is reading in this CBS News story on how indy bookstores are booming.

The German magazine, Bild der Wissenschaft – Picture of Science – has chosen the German translation of The Soul of an Octopus — Rendezvous mit einem Oktopus – as the best non-fiction of 2018 in their entertainment category.

Another Octo Convert. K. D. Miller is a Canadian writer who has won a following with her short story collections, including All Saints and Late Breaking. Recently Miller was interviewed about her favorite books. What book are you an “evangelist” for? she was asked. Miller replied, “The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. I couldn’t believe I was reading a whole book about cephalopods. Montgomery is a wonderful nature writer. She was one of the models for a character in my latest book – a woman who writes about spiders, bats and other things most people want nothing to do with. The Soul of an Octopus is proof that you can write about anything, anything at all, and, provided you do it with sufficient authority and skill, you’ll have people turning the pages.”

Inky’s Amazing Escape is Amazon’s pick for the best children’s nonfiction book of 2018.

Octo Wine. Two bottles of very appropriately labeled wine from a celebratory dinner at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where Sy had the privilege of speaking. “Here’s to teachers, students, mollusks and raptors: Cheers!,” says Sy.

While in Arksansas to talk to students at Hendrix College, Sy enjoyed her visit to Raptor Rehab of Central Arkansas.

How to Be a Good Creature starts its second month on the New York Times Monthly Science Bestseller list.

Brain Pickings. Each week Maria Popova’s hundreds of thousands of readers wait for her thoughtful dispatches on art, science, philosophy, and other subjects. Last Sunday the subject of Brain Pickings was emus, pigs, tarantulas, Border Collies, and some of the other animals that grace Sy’s latest book, How to Be a Good Creature. Maria gets to the essence of the book. Sy, she writes, is “one of the most poetic science writers of our time.”