Spell the Month in Books – April

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Jana at Reviews From the Stacks. Her theme for April is animals on the cover or in the title.

A – But Not the Armadillo by Sandra Boynton (2018).  This armadillo quietly travels the less-traveled road: he picks cranberries, stops and smells the flowers, takes a nap in the meadow, searches out the source of a beautiful melody, and finally passes Boynton's better-known hippopotamus rushing in the other direction.

P – Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater (1938) is a feel-good children’s classic about a family that adopts one penguin, which soon turns into 12, and how they take over the household!

R – Rain Without Thunder by Gary Francione (1996). This is a book about the ideology of the animal rights movement by my favorite law school professor. He posits that advocating humane treatment of animals demonstrates a misplaced assumption of ownership, retaining a sense of them as instrumental to human ends. When they are considered dispensable property, he says, they are left fundamentally without "rights."

I – The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams (1961). I have not actually read this but saw the play at the American Repertory Theater with James Earl Jones (what a voice!). It’s set at a rundown hotel in Mexico and mixes a group of Americans, Nazi vacationers, and an iguana that lives under the veranda.

L – A Lion in the Way by Elizabeth Cadell (1982). In this novel based on her own experience in India, Cadell compares the privileged life of the British before WWI with the Indian fight for independence led by Ghandi and others in the 1920s through 1940s. My review.

Have you encountered any of these?