The Good Good Pig is now in its 18th printing. Some pig!
Spanish Tiger. Sy’s book about the man-eating tigers of the largest mangrove swamp on earth, Spell of the Tiger, will be published in Spain this September.
What baby needs food every 20 minutes — but if you feed him too much, he could pop? While at the fabulous Santa Barbara Zoo, Sy recorded two short interviews – three minutes each — with her friend the host Dean Noble, which aired on Zoological Radio.
The Art of the Octopus. The Children & the Arts Festival parade in Peterborough, NH, starts with a big parade of giant puppets. This year’s theme was Under the Sea, so Hancock Library Director Amy Markus and her merry band created this giant octo honoring, The Soul of an Octopus. “We also sang Octopus’s Garden as we walked,” says Amy. “It was fab.”
Pulpos to the People. The Spanish edition of The Soul of an Octopus will be published in October. Here’s a first look at the cover.
Book Riot has named The Soul of an Octopus as one of its 50 Best Nature Books. “If you didn’t think ‘page-turning adventure’ and ‘hallucinatory’ could be used to describe a book about octopus intelligence, then you should read this book,” says Book Riot. Sy is honored to join so many authors on the list that she admires, including Barbara J. King (How Animals Grieve), Julie Zinkefoose (Bluebird Effect), Temple Grandin (Animals in Translation), and Dava Sobel (Galileo’s Daughter). What a great group! Read the entire list here.
In the May 1 Washington Post, Sy will change your mind about hyenas: “Sy Montgomery thinks hyenas have gotten a bad reputation. They are, it turns out, great hunters, not the skulking scavengers of ‘The Lion King.’ They are also very social creatures and express themselves through a variety of sounds, not just what seem like hysterical giggles.” This is the first review of The Hyena Scientist. Read it here.
Sy received a royal welcome April 20 to Wendover School in Greensburgh, Pa. The 6th, 7th and 8th graders made more than 200 posters inspired by her work and travels, which are displayed throughout the school. Leading up to the visit, students watched videos, read interviews, and studied Sy’s books and the animals who inspired them. Thanks to the incredible staff at the school, especially librarian Beth McGuire students see authors as awesome as rock stars!
Good Creatures All. Sy is delighted to be on the front page of today’s Wall St. Journal in the company of many other fine books about animals: “My Beloved Octopus: Animal Memoirs Move Way Beyond Cats and Dogs.”
And the lead of the story:
In her book How to Be a Good Creature, Sy Montgomery gains rare insight into her late mother after a wild ermine rips the head off one of the author’s chickens.
“She was, in her way, as fierce as that ermine,” Ms. Montgomery writes in her memoir about lessons she has learned from 13 different animals. After seeing the voracious creature, she writes, her heart “flooded with the balm of forgiveness” for her mother.
Sy enjoyed her visit to Newport, Oregon, where she was met by 100 octo-devotees at the Newport Public library and 300 fans at the Eugene Public Library. Sy was visiting because of the good work of Newport Reads! during which the entire community is invited to read and discuss one book, in this case a certain book about octopuses. The above display was created by Linda Anable from facts and materials provided by Lance Beck and Evonne Mochon-Collura. And below, Sy visits with Cleo at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Thank you all for the great visit.
Coming in September: How to be a Good Creature. In her new book Sy tells us about the personalities and quirks of 13 animals—her friends—who have profoundly affected her.
“What have animals taught me about life?” Sy asks in the book’s introduction.
Her answer: “How to be a good creature.”
“All the animals I’ve known—from the first bug I must have spied as an infant, to the moon bears I met in Southeast Asia, to the spotted hyenas I got to know in Kenya—have been good creatures. Each individual is a marvel and perfect in his or her own way. Just being with any animal is edifying, for each has a knowing that surpasses human understanding….
“Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways. In these pages you’ll meet animals who changed my life by the briefest of meetings. You’ll meet others who become members of my family. Some are dogs who shared our home. One’s a pig who lived in our barn. Three are huge flightless birds, two are tree kangaroos, and there’s also a spider, a weasel, and an octopus.
“I am still learning how to be a good creature. I try earnestly, but, perhaps like you, too, I often fail. But I am having a great life trying—a life exploring this sweet green world, and returning to a home where I am blessed with a multispecies family offering me comfort and joy beyond my wildest dreams.”
Seen at Out of the Blue, a gift shop on Big Pine Key in Florida. Thanks to Elizabeth Hunter Lavallee for taking on the hard work of winter reconnaissance in Florida.
The John Burroughs Association has awarded the 2018 Riverby Award to Amazon Adventure. “The Riverby Award recognizes exceptional nonfiction natural history books for young readers. The books selected present perceptive and artistic accounts of direct experiences in nature and invite young readers to explore the natural world for themselves.” Amazon Adventure is one of five books honored with the Riverby Award in 2018.
Sy enjoyed talking about Tamed & Untamed on the Mongabay podcast. Mongabay brings its listeners “news and inspiration from nature’s frontline.” You can hear Sy here or find Mongabay on Spotify.
Octo keeps swimming. The Soul of an Octopus is number 3 on the list of nonfiction bestsellers in the Bay Area.
We’re late on this. Last year the Berlin Medical History Museum presented an exhibit called: The Soul is an Octopus: Ancient Ideas of Life and the Body.
The exhibit examined the “ancient conceptions of the soul and its interaction with the human body. In Graeco-Roman thought the soul was not only the basis of an individual person’s thinking, feeling or moral character. It was also a biological principle that gave life and structure to the body…
The exhibit asked “three important questions that were central to classical philosophers and physicians alike:
“In short what did it mean “to be ‘ensouled’ in ancient times.”
Coming in February to bookstores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novogorod, Omsk, Kazan, and elsewhere, the Russian edition of The Soul of an Octopus.
“Bearing Arms: The Amazing World of the Octopus.” Sy enjoyed talking about octopuses on the NPR show 1A. She was on with Danna Staaf, author of Squid Empire, and Kelley Voss, a doctoral student at the University of California at Santa Cruz’s Mehta Lab in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology. (1A is produced by WAMU 88.5 and is distributed by NPR.) Listen here.
Check out Freya on the move. “Freya,” the octopus you can now see at the New England Aquarium “seems to have strong opinions about some things. For example, she’ll grab the magnetic glass cleaner from her side of the glass when she decides it is not time to clean the glass. Her personality definitely shines through the glass,” say the folks at the aquarium. They’d love it if you’d come “meet this spunky new addition to the Olympic Coast exhibit.”
When Sy was in New York recently talking at the 92nd St. Y with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Barbra J. King, she was treated to a tour of The Butterfly Conservatory at the Museum of Natural History. Reader and museum volunteer Sandya Satia was a gracious guide. In the photo Sy enjoys a visit from a Blue Morpho and a Magnificent Owl.
Tamed and Untamed is the number one bestselling paperback at the Concord Bookshop in Concord, Massachusetts.
Sy was delighted to be on Brendan O’Meara’s Creative Nonfiction podcast. She told Brendan: “I have never picked the safe option and I have never regretted choosing what I’ve chosen ever.” After the show Brendan said, “Frankly, I came away from this conversation feeling good, just good, and the people who make you feel that way are the people you want to surround yourself with. I know I ended that sentence with a preposition, but whatever.”
Rendezvous mit einem Oktopus is popular in Germany. The German translation has just gone back for its fifth printing.
Spanish Octo on the way. Seix Barral, an imprint of Planeta, will be bringing a translation of The Soul of an Octopus to Spain.
The Good Good Pig paperback edition is now in its 17th printing.
Tamed and Untamed has crossed the pond. The Daily Mail in London has named Tamed and Untamed as one of the Best Reads of the Year, calling it “a charming collection of short, sometimes funny and occasionally eccentric essays.”
Un Animal Fantastique. The cover for French edition of The Soul of an Octopus is here. The “livre fantastique” will be published in April 2018.
Love of spiders. The fourth graders in Megan Popp’s and Christine Wittig’s class at PS/MS 200 in Flushing, Queens enjoyed The Tarantula Scientist. The class wrote Sy beautiful letters, and they are now pen pals with Sy. One student, Rochelle, wrote: “I really love your book and before I read it I hated spiders…Sam Marshall was a big help and taught me to learn about how important spiders are.”
Vulture Days. This is the view from the condor pen on a recent morning at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge in California. Sy is researching a new book about the critically endangered California Condor. Estelle Sandhaus took this photo through binoculars. Sandhaus is the Director of Conservation and Research at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Sy is also working with photographer Tia Strombeck as they create a new entry in Scientists in the Field series.
And here Sy is holding Condor 771, a “sub-adult” female, to be exact. She’s getting her health and telemetry check, as does every precious California alive on Earth, thanks to cooperation between the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Santa Barbara Zoo, and others.
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Sy had a great visit with the students at the Moharimet School in Madbury, New Hampshire. Mrs. Schmitt’s third grade class sent Sy home with a pile of drawings of the animals they love. A few of them are here.
Tamed and Untamed is a bestseller. For the week ending October 29, 2017, Tamed and Untamed is number 6 on the trade paperback nonfiction list of the New England Independent Booksellers Association’s IndieBound Bestsellers.
Listen to Sy and Liz talk critters on KGNU, an independent community radio station in the Boulder-Denver metro area.
Artist Hannah Ellingwood recently went to the New England Aquarium with Sy (the writer) to meet Sy the Octopus. Hannah says: “Putting my hand into the water and having Sy reach out to explore me with her suckers was such an experience and I was excited to create my first octopus cut out inspired by her! Much thanks to Sy Montgomery for introducing me to Sy the octo!” See more of Hannah’s cut-out art on Instagram.
Liz and Sy thank the Norwich Bookstore for having them come by to read. The turn-out far exceeded the small store, so everyone gathered in a nearby church.
Tiny Fish, Big Honor. Amazon Adventure: How Tiny Fish are Saving the World’s Largest Rainforest is a Junior Library Guild Selection for Fall 2017.
The Soul of a Naturalist. “Montgomery has brought us closer to the consciousnesses of the animals with whom we share our world,” says literary magazine Tin House. “The result is a body of writing that is as rigorous in its thinking as it is enchanting, and that our planet in environmental crisis is lucky to have. It was an honor to speak with one of our greatest naturalists—and one who takes dance lessons with her dog, to boot.” Sy had a lovely time talking with associate editor Emma Komlos-Hrobsky. Read the Tin House interview.
Octopus is the Solution. The New York Times Acrostic Solution for Sunday, October 1, 2017 was based on this: “(SY) MONTGOMERY, (THE) SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS — Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can… stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange.”
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Three scientists starring in three of Sy’s Scientists in the Field titles have been nominated for the Indianapolis Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in conservation. Scott Dowd, featured in Sy’s latest kids book, Amazon Adventure; Lisa Dabek, star of Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, and Laurie Marker, subject of Chasing Cheetahs, all made the cut to be considered for the prize honoring the most successful conservationist in the world. Congratulations to these wonderful friends on this recognition for their crucial work saving animals.
Rendezvous mit einem Oktopus. The Soul of an Octopus is a bestseller in Germany. It debuted this week at #12 on the Spiegel bestseller list. Extrem schlau, as the book’s subtitle says, Extremely smart.
Octo Returns. The Soul of the Octopus has bobbed up at number 9 on The Boston Globe’s nonfiction paperback best seller list, leaving us to ask: Is this good for the Sox?
