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.

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.

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.”

Texas Two-Step: Jellyfish and Bats. Sy’s visit to the fabulous Texas Book Festival brought a reunion with Spineless author Juli Berwald – her book is about jellyfish – and gave Sy a chance to meet native bats at the Austin Bat Refuge with her new friends, the refuge’s founders, Dianne Odegard and Lee MacKenzie. (But no actual country/western dancing, doing the Texas Two-Step.)

Sy was at the Nature Literature Festival in Barcelona in October where she met three of these Iberian wild boars. (We don’t know if these boars are publishers, editors, or writers.) They were grunting happily and wagging their tails as they dug up grass with their flexible nose disks. “Must have been a blessing from Christopher Hogwood,” says Sy. Her Spanish publisher flew her to Spain to celebrate the new Spanish translation of Spell of the Tiger.

Bestseller. How to be a Good Creature debuts at #9 on The New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction list for October 14.

People magazine has listed How to Be A Good Creature as one of The Best New Books of the year.

Inky’s Amazing Escape is a Powell’s Books Holiday Pick for 2018. “It’s perfect for curious kids and budding naturalists,” says Powell’s, the renowned Portland, Oregon, bookstore.

Pulpos to the People! The Spanish edition of Soul of an Octopus has arrived, and flowers from Sy’s editor at Houghton Mifflin, the amazing Kate O’Sullivan.

How to be a Good Creature is #10 on New York Times Monthly Bestseller list for science books.

Portrait of a Critic at Work. This young reader has just received a copy of Sy’s new children’s picture book, Inky’s Amazing Escape. The verdict? She likes what she sees.

The further adventures of Heidi, the best friend of turtles everywhere. Heidi, age 10, raised nearly $600 for sea turtle rescue and rehab. (See the entry below in August.) Heidi loves sea turtles. She’s upset that we don’t treat turtles better. On the last day of her summer vacation, Heidi went to the New England Aquarium to present a check to the aquarium’s veterinarian Dr. Charlie Innis. To celebrate, she got a hug and a squeeze from the aquarium’s male giant Pacific octopus, Professor Ludvig von Drake. And she fed leaves of lettuce to a very appreciative Myrtle, the 550-pound green sea turtle who reigns as the Queen of the aquarium’s Giant Ocean Tank.

Rescued and released. Sy recently helped release baby turtles. The turtles were hatched in the wild from nests carefully guarded by citizens with permits from state authorities. Sy, and acclaimed wildlife artist Matt Patterson, hand-carried the babies to release sites in habitats approved by biologists. (That’s Matt’s hand holding two turtles.) Too many turtles are endangered by poachers and innocent kids who just want a pet. So please: Do help a turtle cross the road, but don’t take a turtle home from the wild.

Big crowd for Octopus and Jellyfish. Scenes from National Book Festival in Washington D.C. on September 1. A large crowd of over 1,000 heard Sy (that’s her in the middle) along with Juli Berwald, author of a book about jellyfish, Spineless (right) and the moderator, NPR Commentator Linda Holmes (left).

The Octo Ministry Continues. How to cap off a perfect weekend after the National Book Festival in Washington? With a visit with the unnamed young male Giant Pacific Octopus at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Sy sends many thanks to aquarist Peter Larson and volunteers Phil Wujek and Mike O’Connell. And guess what’s on offer at the aquarium gift shop? (Hint: a certain soulful octopus book.)

Birds of a (Clay) Feather. Helen Weiser is a potter and pottery instructor in British Columbia. She’s new to Sy’s books. She began with Birdology, which was recommended to her. She enjoyed it and decided to display the book at recent pottery exhibit with three of her “Gooney Birds” at the local library in West Vancouver.

Find Your Own Amazon Adventure. Sy’s friend, teacher Marion Magill, has developed a fabulous virtual tour of the Amazon, ideal for classrooms or just for fun. Sy is one of the guides. The New England Aquarium’s Scott Dowd, star of Sy’s book, Amazon Adventure, is another guide; and a third guide is Anna Magill, Sy’s teenage friend, to whom The Soul of an Octopus is dedicated. Here’s the link. Enjoy your trip—and it’s free!

A turtle’s best friend. Sy meets some amazing people in her travels. When she spoke at a nearby elementary school she met Heidi, age 10. Heidi loves sea turtles. She’s upset that we don’t treat turtles better. She is raising money to help sea turtle rescue at the New England Aquarium. She made art and eco-bags and sold them at a booth in her town. (That’s Heidi’s mom, dad, and three sisters in the second photo — what a great team.) And this is just a start, Sy says. This girl is a whirlwind!

Liz and Sy recently read at the Norwich, Vermont, bookstore. You can watch them here.