Libraries Sheffield: Spotlight 28: Animal Companions

Inspired by spending a little more time around them than usual these past few months, today's Library Spotlight focuses on pets and our relationships with the animals, tamed and untameable, that walk, fly and swim among us.

#BookQuiz-Fur-iday

This week we've got some questions to test your knowledge of pets in prose, poetry and beyond. Here's a preview:

Ernest Hemingway famously had a fondness for a particular type of cat with an unusual inherited feature, many of which still live in the museum that was once his home. What is unusual about the “Hemingway cats”?

What is the name of the little dog who hails from Donaldson’s Dairy in Lynley Dodd’s classic rhyme-filled picture books?

You can try out the full quiz on our Twitter page. Feel free to share it with fellow bookworms! We'll reveal the answers next Friday, along with a brand new quiz.

Tigers in the underpass, eagles at the airport...

Last week Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City won the Kate Greenaway prize for illustrated children’s books (although its stunning artwork and thoughtful reflections on nature will appeal to readers of any age!)

An exploration of humans’ complicated relationships with animals, both domesticated and wild, the book is filled with dream-like images of crocodiles, bears and other wildlife roaming through urban landscapes - pictures that resonate even more strongly after the recent photos of badgers and deer wandering around Sheffield city centre...

In this video and BookTrust interview, Shaun Tan talks about the ideas and art in Tales from the Inner City.

Take a look at one of the book's beautiful short stories, "Dog", here.

"A boy who is trapped, training a bird that flies free"

Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave and its film adaptation are one of Yorkshire's most famous stories.

In BBC Four's Looking for Kes, Greg Davies meets director Ken Loach and actor Dai Bradley, and travels to Barnsley and to the University of Sheffield's archives to find out more about Barry Hines, his inspirations and his novel's lasting legacy.

The programme is available to watch here on iPlayer.

Seeing the world through animal eyes

Writing from an animal's point-of-view is a fascinating challenge many authors have taken on. In recent years we've seen examples as varied as A Dog's Purpose, The Bees and the extraordinary journey through the minds of foxes, elephants and spiders in The Many Selves of Katherine North.

The recent BBC World Service series Dominion examines
whether we can ever truly understand the workings of non-human minds. The episode on writing as an animal is especially interesting!

Listen to "The animals and the poets" here.

Creativity During Corona

How would you go about writing from a pet's perspective? Why not give it a try!

For her latest Creativity During Corona post, Claire from Central Library has shared a variety of creative writing activities on the theme of pets. As inspiration she includes some funny and frank poems, including Linda Pastan's poem on bringing a new dog into your home.

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities

Check out all the poems and writing exercises on our Facebook page.

Follow us on Eventbrite for details of Claire's upcoming creative writing Zoom meet-ups, based around each Friday's Library Spotlight theme.

Are you a cat person? Or a dog person?

Or both? There’s no need to choose with these great how-to-draw videos for children.

For feline fans, check out this reading of Nathan Bryon’s picture book Look Up! - then try your hand at sketching one of the story’s stars, Luna the cat, with a step-by-step guide by illustrator Dapo Adeola.

If you’d rather have a pug for a pet, you can learn how to draw one with a rather snazzy jumper in this video from Sarah McIntyre, illustrator of Pugs of the Frozen North.

Animal Tales in the eLibrary

Our eLibrary features a range of great books about animal companions, including current book club favourites and some fantastic picture books and funny stories for young children.

All of these eBooks can be borrowed for free. To find out more about becoming a library member, click here.

The Cat and the City

One of this month's BBC Radio 2 Book Club picks, Nick Bradley's debut novel dips into the seemingly disconnected lives of a group of strangers in Tokyo, linked together by the wanderings of a stray cat. Even though this is, undeniably, an outsider's view of Japanese culture, its central image of a mysterious feline who moves fluidly across different groups of society, genres, identities, art and reality is wonderful.

Readers who like intricately interwoven stories about multiple characters, like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, may find much to enjoy in this unique jigsaw puzzle of a book.

Borrow The Cat and the City from our eLibrary

Little Eyes

In Little Eyes, kentukis are the latest must-have gadget - and a very different kind of animal companion. Part-cyberpet, part-webcam, these outwardly cute robotic animals allow another person from across the globe to watch and interact with their owner, any time they want.

Longlisted for 2020's International Booker Prize, Samanta Schweblin's haunting portrayal of a world where people are both constantly connected and physically and emotionally distant has attracted a lot of attention recently. It’s not an easy read, but fans of Black Mirror may find its take on technology interesting. The novel's beady-eyed look at the ideas and feelings strangers can form about one another in an online world is certainly food for thought.

Borrow Little Eyes

Zoo City
A twist on both the crime novel
and the idea of animal familiars
(with a very endearing sloth!)

H is for Hawk
Helen Macdonald's
emotional account of
training a goshawk

My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell's classic
childhood memoir

For children...

One Shoe Two Shoes

A fabulous picture book from Sheffield's own Caryl Hart!

This has everything: catchy rhymes, counting, a cute and curious dog - and lots and lots of shoes!

Borrow the eBook edition of One Shoe, Two Shoes here

Pet Defenders

In this supremely silly sci-fi series from Gareth P. Jones, undercover agents Biskit the dog and Mitzy the cat battle to protect the Earth from some gross and grungy alien invaders, all while trying to keep their missions a secret from their owners.

Fast-paced and very funny, these chapter books are great for children aged 7+ looking for a light-hearted read. Steve May’s cartoony illustrations are brilliant too!

Check out the Pet Defenders series on our eLibrary