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Most people have a special animal or two in their lives. Pet owners usually think their furry friends are the cutest, the smartest, or the best behaved, but most can agree that some animals are really extraordinary. Cats that call 911 and dogs that assist their paralyzed owners come to mind, but all over the country there are cats that comfort the sick and dogs whose loyal disposition and work ethic motivate at-risk kids. Four new and upcoming books tell the stories of some inspiring animals.

Random Acts of Kindness by Animals by Stephanie Laland (Conari Press, 978-1-57324-350-6) tells true stories about dogs, cats, ducks, monkeys, horses, and dolphins that show extraordinary courage and kindness to humans and other animals. Scarlett was a cat who returned five times to a burning building to retrieve each of her kittens. In the process she was blinded and had to complete a head count of her brood by touch. A tame deer leads a lost hunter to the home of his owners. A homing pigeon befriends a young boy, and when he is hospitalized 120 miles away, the same pigeon, identified by a band on its leg, taps on the boy’s hospital window. These short but moving stories, taken from books including The Souls of Animals and Animal Heroes, will bring tears to the eyes of sensitive readers

In Angel Dogs With a Mission: Divine Messengers in Service to All Life (New World Library, 978-1-57731-602-2), Allen and Linda Anderson tell the stories of animals whose lives are dedicated to serving their human companions. Kerrill Knaus-Hardy discusses her dog Abdul, one of the first service dogs for people with disabilities. Abdul was a black lab and golden retriever mixed breed dog who learned to help his owner with Multiple Sclerosis open doors, turn on lights, get food from the fridge, and perform other tasks. He accompanied her to college classes wearing a backpack and gave hope to other people with disabilities who had never seen a service dog who could help them.

Sheriff Dan McClelland writes about Midge, the world’s smallest police dog. Midge is a Narcotics-sniffing Chihuahua-rat terrier mix. And Lisa LaVerdiere talks about a program in Wisconsin that matches dogs rescued from unsuitable homes with at-risk teens who train them to become service dogs. “The dogs needed their minds stimulated and their hearts opened to trust humans again,” LaVerdiere writes. “The boys needed to learn responsibility and to love and be loved by a dog.”

Dogtown is a dogs-only neighborhood inside the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, where rescued dogs are given behavioral training and medical treatment until they can be adopted. Best Friends is the largest no-kill sanctuary in the country. “Never give up” is a rule that the staff at Dogtown live by. They believe that every dog can be rehabilitated.

In Dogtown: A Sanctuary for Rescued Dogs (Sellers Publishing, 978-1-4162-0526-5) Bob Somerville tells the stories of some of the canines who have been saved by the staff at Best Friends, including twenty-two pit bulls from Michael Vick’s dogfighting ring and many dogs that were abandoned in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Although it doesn’t tell a true story, the children’s picture book Titanicat by Marty Crisp (Sleeping Bear Press, 978-1-58536-355-1) is based on a true possibility. Cats have historically been considered to be lucky by sailors. The cats on several battleships in World War II even became famous. The author of this children’s picture book, illustrated by Robert Papp, believes that the Titanic certainly had a ship’s cat, although he admits that its fate is unknown.

In Titanicat, cabin boy Jim considers himself lucky to be a servant on the brand new ocean liner, Titanic. “I’ll be going all the way to America!” he tells the chief steward, who quickly puts him in charge of the ship’s cat. Jim names her 4-0-1, after the Titanic’s yard number and nickname (it was unlucky to call a ship by its name during construction). Jim has his hands full when he discovers that 4-0-1 is a mother of three. Between his chores preparing the ship for its passengers, he chases the cats around the decks and through off-limits areas. When he sees 4-0-1 unloading her kittens from the ship just before it weighs anchor, he decides to hustle the last kitten out to her. Jim misses the boat while reuniting the kitten with its mother. He considers himself very unlucky until he reads the newspapers a few days later…

Minnesota-based MinnPost.com discusses measures that book publishes are taking to reduce their environmental impact. The article states that 30 million trees are used to make US-published books each year.

“The carbon footprint of a single book is 8.85 pounds,” Amy Goetzman writes, “and the book publishing industry as a whole emits a net 12.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide every year, taking into account all steps of the production cycle, from tree harvesting to incinerating that paperback you left out in the rain.”

Goetzman speaks to representatives small Minnesota-based publishers including Milkweed Editions and Free Spirit Publishing, which are both printing on recycled paper.

In an effort to promote technological literacy and encourage library use by teens, the Manitowoc-Calumet Library System in Wisconsin is hosting Wii tournaments for sixth- through twelfth-graders this summer. “

“Gaming…is so much more than playing a game,” Rachel Muchin Young, public relations manager for the Manitowoc Public Library, told the Herald Times Reporter. “Libraries are all about literacy, but literacy isn’t only reading and writing…Literacy is about technology.”

Battle of the Boxes, Competition on the Coast is funded by a $20,000 federal Library Services and Technology Act grant that the library system is sharing with three other systems. The champions of each game will compete in a regional tournament in the fall. Winners of the regional contests will compete at the state level.

From staff reports. Share your news and information with Whitney Hallberg, Managing Editor.

Body, Mind and Spirit. WILLIAM BLAKE’S SEXUAL PATH TO SPIRITUAL VISION Marsha Keith Schuchard (Inner Traditions, 53 b/w illustrations, 416 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-1-59477-211-5): PhD in British literature who explored the esoteric-erotic underground traditions of 17th- to 20th-century secret societies discusses the Romantic poet (1757-1827) and author of Songs of Innocence, and his beliefs in the “Spiritual Life”: topics include Moravian and Swedenborgian erotic and visionary experimentation, secret kabbalistic and tantric rituals, and Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”: “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

Family & Relationships. OVERCOMING SCHOOL ANXIETY: HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD DEAL WITH SEPARATION, TESTS, HOMEWORK, BULLIES, MATH PHOBIA, AND OTHER WORRIES by Diane Peters Mayer (AMACOM, 256 pages, softcover, $16.00, 978-0-8144-7446-4): psychotherapist and anxiety expert shows how parents can help their children; includes breathing and relaxation exercises, focusing techniques, and tips on food consumption such as bananas, which can reduce anxiety because the potassium functions like a beta-blocker limiting the effects of stress hormones.

Health. THE VENUS WEEK: DISCOVER THE POWERFUL SECRET OF YOUR CYCLE…AT ANY AGE by Rebecca Booth (Da Capo Press, 304 pages, hardcover, $24.00, 978-0-7382-1164-0): obstetrician and gynecologist presents wisdom gleaned from treating thousands of women concerning the week that precedes ovulation; topics include minimizing the dramatic swings in energy and mood, understanding the effects of estrogen (the “feel-good hormone”) and testosterone (“the hormone of desire”), and vitamins and dietary supplements such as cinnamon and dark chocolate.

Literary Collections. THE BEDSIDE, BATHTUB, & ARMCHAIR COMPANION TO DRACULA by Mark Dawidziak (Continuum, b/w photographs, 200 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-0-8264-1794-7): Cleveland Plain Dealer television critic and author of Mark My Words: Twain on Writing discusses the Count as well as vampirism in literature; of the eighty-five sections three are “Bram Stoker: The Man Behind the Myth,” “Metaphors and Monsters: What Does Dracula Represent,” and “Ten Shakespeare references in Dracula” such as Jonathan Harker’s “…I feared those weird sisters” (Dracula’s three vampire brides--the three witches in Mac Beth).

Literary Collections. MY GUANTANAMO DIARY: THE DETAINEES AND THE STORIES THEY TOLD ME by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan (Public Affairs, b/w photographs, 320 pages, hardcover, $25.95, 978-1-58648-498-9): Wall Street Journal and New York Times contributor with Afghanistan heritage listens to the stories of untried prisoners; included are ten stories of Sam al-Haj, a Sudanese journalist who was picked up while covering the war in Afghanistan; Taj Mohammad, the goatherd accused of associating with the Taliban, and the poet Abdul Rahim, who wrote a parody combining the Monica Lewinsky scandal and President Clinton’s offer of $5 million for Osama bin Laden, but was really a “lampoon” of the poor Afghan.

Literary Criticism. MARK TWAIN, UNSANCTIFIED NEWSPAPER REPORTER by James E. Caron (University of Missouri Press, 504 pages, hardcover, $49.95, 978-0-8262-1802-5): associate professor of English examines the initial phase of Samuel Clemen’s (1835-1910) writing career; references include the burlesque in frontier newspapers such as the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop, the Boston Carpet Bag, the first comic periodical for “a more refined audience,” and comic metaphors such as the “image of covered wagons so scarred with bullets that they resemble giant nutmeg graters.”

Literary Criticism. THE SOUL AND BARBED WIRE: AN INTRODUCTION TO SOLZHENITSYN, editors Edward E. Ericson Jr. and Alexis Klimoff (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 268 pages, softcover, $18.00, 978-1-933859-58-3, hardcover, $28.00, 978-1-933859-57-6): professor emeritus of English at Calvin College and professor of Russian literature, language, and culture at Vassar present a short biography of the Russian author (b. 1918) who wrote The Gulag Archipelago and critical comments on his writing; among the titles discussed are The Oak and the Calf, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Cancer Ward where Oleg demonstrates that: “a hard life improves the vision.”

Performing Arts. THE AUTUMN OF ITALIAN OPERA: FROM VERISMO TO MODERNISM, 1890-1915 by Alan Mallach (Northeastern University Press, b/w photographs, 490 pages, hardcover, $55.00, 978-1-55553-683-2): independent scholar and author of Pietro Mascagni and His Operas discusses the last great opera period and the nature of the opera industry as well as social framework; several of the chapters are “Italian Opera in Crsis:1860-1890” and the decline of Verdi’s output, Luigi Illica: Librettist to a Generation,” who molded the works of Puccini, Mascagni, and Giordano, and “The Premiere of Cavalleria Rusticana,” which marked the beginning of verismo where fans were exuberant after they heard Alfio’s entrance aria: “The horse stamps, / The bridle-bells jingle, / The whip cracks. Ho-la” and after the finale sixty curtain calls ensued.

Reference. HANDBOOK OF INDUSTRY PROFILES 2008: ANALYSIS AND TRENDS FOR 300 INDUSTRIES by Hoovers and First Research (Hoover’s Business Press, 8 x 11, 912 pages, hardcover, $195.00, 978-1-57311-125-6); features 300 US industries’ competitive situations, product information, operations, technology issues, critical challengers, marketing processes, and employment facts; for example: Funeral Operations, of which there are 16,000 funeral homes that generate $15 billion annual revenue, employ embalmers that must work with a variety of toxic chemicals, but “industry wages are slightly below the national average for all US workers.”

Social Science. IN THE WAKE OF VIOLENCE: IMAGE AND SOCIAL REFORM by Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp (Michigan State University, 349 pages, hardcover, $59.95, 978-0-87013-821-8): college teacher and author of The Transfiguring Sword explores the immediate and longer-term aftermath of violence; examples include the arson at a Vail ski resort by environmentalists, the murder of Dr. John Britton by an anti-abortion activist, and the torching of a University of California research laboratory by animal rights activists.

by Alex Moore, Book Review Editor

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