One of the poems in PAW DREAM MAZES, “A Trasher Trashed,” has a kitten that was trashed and is dreaming a nightmare. This part of her dream is directly connected to her reality: The person who often did trash his cats had placed his face next to three thrashing rats, opened his mouth to scrunch his metal-like teeth, and scared the rats that were above and beneath. All the poems in PAW DREAM MAZES have dream/reality connections, animal content, rhymes, rhythms, alliteration, and metaphors. The dreamers include animals, people, and aliens from outer space. A few poems in this book reference COVID-19 experiences. PAW DREAM MAZES has sonnets, two prayer poems, narrative poems with a lot of action, ten pictures, and twenty-four mazes with content from five maze poems: “Mazes in Dreams,” “Dreams of Rescue,” “Cat Grammar,” “A Hungry Mouse in a Dream Maze,” and “Polydactyl Reality and Dreams.” Connections to our history are referenced in several poems: “Two Mayflower Dogs,” “A Banished Dog,” and “President Abraham Lincoln’s Pets.” Three poems have sci-fi content. “Tigurrrs of Space” has multiple alien tigurrrs that all love their own space and kidnap one of Earth’s tigers from a zoo. “Alien Bears in Pairs” has alien bears that interact with campers, police officers, a bear, and a dog. “Pawsing Time and Space” has aliens who visit the minds of dreaming animals and a senator on Earth.

Paw Learning Mazes has maze poems, sonnets, and narrative poems with a lot of action and interaction between people and animals. Action also happens between animals and animals, as this stanza from the poem “Paws Learning in a Jungle” shows: “The mother was the first monkey to smell and to see the tiger that had been hiding in a different tree, but now was moving toward the mother’s only child that was too scared to run off into a jungle wild.” Different kinds of learning happen in Paw Learning Mazes, including writing, reading, financial literacy, STEM, visual, aural, historic, and multi-modal. People and animals can also learn within their dreams and from each other, as illustrated in “A Cat Learning How to Fly,” “Hissing for Free Space,” and “A Cat and a Dog Competing to Write Faster.” Team learning is seen in multiple poems, such as in “Team Learning for Ants.” Interaction between animals and people happens in “Learning with Birds in Roger Williams Park,” “A Dog Helping Her Owner to Read Fast,” “Pigeons Flying to Financial Literacy,” “Cats Grading Essays,” “A STEM Dream about an Egret,” and many other poems in this book. Paw Learning Mazes has thirty-four mazes, which are parts of eight maze poems. These mazes and eighteen pictures add to the multi-modal elements of this book’s poetry.

Genre: Space opera. Comparison: Veronica Roth’s “Carve the Mark” meets Interstellar. For over 22 years now, since my earliest memories, I close my eyes and see the same dream over and over again. In front of me, there is a world with an endless dome sky, sprinkled with stars, gigantic green plants, and a multicolour buffet of herbs and fruit. It’s a world that’s warmed with the light of a golden sun, whose rays simply radiate warmth without killing anyone, almost as if from a fairytale. It’s a world filled with crystal-like water and uncontaminated oxygen. My visions are so bright that they outshine reality itself. Every time as I wake up in my capsule, it’s as if I return to the shadows, stepping away from that pure light. Going to a space station with the task of catching a dangerous spy, I couldn’t imagine that this would be the person to reveal the truth and essence of my dreams. The pulse which the old man Iza spotted transmits the sights, music, and even the language of an unexplored yet inhabited planet, exactly identical to what I envision. I always knew that a long road was waiting for me, but what exactly awaits on the other side of this mysterious star maze? ILLUSTRATIONS AND A BRIEF DESCRIPTION CAN BE FOUND ON THE SITE DEVOTED TO THE BOOK: http://7mirov.com/en/

Like Aesop’s Fables and Orwell’s Animal Farm, The Maze is populated with animal characters who, in their words and actions, reveal truths about human nature. In The Woods, a very popular, clever, and ambitious rat named Sniff—who commands a pack of deputy rats known as The Five—intends to replace the aging leader, Owl, when he retires on election day in two weeks. As a famous athlete of the air in his youth, Owl has established The Tradition of Wings. In his speeches to the animals, Sniff—an assistant to Owl but already acting as if he’s the leader—promises to establish what he calls “The Kingdom of Sharing,” in which rats will be “leaders” and all other animals will be “followers.” Opposing Sniff’s rise to power are two winged animals—a well-known poet hawk, Wing, and his studious friend, Butterfly—and Claws, a young, robust, and competitive squirrel. The central image of the story is a maze. Sniff has one built ostensibly for community recreation but actually to make money and to display rats’ superiority as maze-runners. Other characters in this sometimes-humorous story include Spider, an architect; Snake, a “shady” character; Stub, a mole who assists Sniff; and Frog, an instructor of bug-catching. The Maze is not only about human nature but about animal life in general. It explores necessities of survival such as status and power, altruism and self-interest, the defense of territory, and the conquering of enemies through group cooperation.

“The person pulled paper cash from the briefcase while spitting more words into D.C. Cat’s face and pushing Cat’s shoulders and fighting paws into the case, which was scratched by Cat’s claws.” Like some of the other poems in AMAZING HOLIDAY PAWS, “Political Scratches from D.C.’s Dreaming Cat on National Cat Day” includes an animal’s point of view: “Atop other tables stood people and cats; their noses shifted round while sniffing for rats.” D.C. Cat—while homeless, dreaming, and wanting change—has a name; Cat interacts with people who have no names. Many animal views are visible in AMAZING HOLIDAY PAWS. The different viewpoints include ferrets on New Year’s Day, a groundhog’s view of climate change, a cat adopting a cat, a spy dog in Washington D.C.’s International Spy Museum, bees working on Labor Day, pets receiving gifts, and pets being gifts. In some of the poems, people do have viewpoints and names. Many interactions between animals and people also happen. For example, in the poem “Gifts of Pets on a Birthday,” a dog and a cat are presented as gifts to twin children. The parents show their children how to integrate the pets with each other and with their new environment. AMAZING HOLIDAY PAWS has rhythms, rhymes, alliteration, metaphors, animal pictures, and photos taken in Washington, D.C. This book has maze poems, prayer poems, sonnets, narratives, and content about holidays, animals, and United States history. “Rainbows on Veterans Day” refers to Sergeant Stubby, and “An American Dream on Washington’s Birthday” references George Washington’s animals.

The actions of those who surround her cause ripple effects of hardship, cruelty and abuse in the life of Gabriella. Torn from what little she knows and loves Gabriella finds herself scavenging for kindness and learns to steer her path choosing not to dwell in what surrounds her but to exist in a life shaped by her own free will.

Extraordinary new insights into the minds and lives of our fellow creatures from two of the world’s top animal authors, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Sy Montgomery. A Mail on Sunday “Critic's Pick” Best Read of the Year "In their writing and in their lives and in their remarkable friendship, Liz and Sy break down false barriers and carry us closer to our fellow creatures.”—from the foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of Elephant Company Tamed and Untamed―a collection of essays penned by two of the world's most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas―explores the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals as diverse as snails, house cats, hawks, sharks, dogs, lions, and even octopuses. Drawing on stories of animals both wild and domestic, the two authors, also best friends, created this book to put humans back into the animal world. The more we learn about what other animals think and do, they explain, the more we understand ourselves as animals, too. Writes Montgomery, “The list of attributes once thought to be unique to our species―from using tools to waging war―is not only rapidly shrinking, but starting to sound less and less impressive when we compare them with other animals’ powers.” With humor, empathy, and introspection, Montgomery and Thomas look into the lives of all kinds of creatures―from man’s best friend to the great white shark―and examine the ways we connect with our fellow species. Both authors have devoted their lives to sharing the animal kingdom’s magic with others, and their combined wisdom is an indispensable contribution to the field of animal literature. The book contains a foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of the bestseller Elephant Company.

With a new introduction on Werner Herzog’s film entitled The Grizzly Man Timothy Treadwell, self-styled “bear whisperer” dared to live among the grizzlies, seeking to overturn the perception of them as dangerously aggressive animals. When he and his girlfriend were mauled, it created a media sensation. In The Grizzly Maze, Nick Jans, a seasoned outdoor writer with a quarter century of experience writing about Alaska and bears, traces Treadwell’s rise from unknown waiter in California to celebrity, providing a moving portrait of the man whose controversial ideas and behavior earned him the scorn of hunters, the adoration of animal lovers and the skepticism of naturalists. “Intensely imagistic, artfully controlled prose . . . behind the building tension of Treadwell’s path to oblivion, a stunning landscape looms.”—Newsday

A maze… two brothers… thousands of directions to take. The two brothers Rannus and Alvus find themselves in a maze with stony walls. Man-eating plants, explosive monsters, and other dangers haunt them, but they do not give up and make it to the palace. At the palace, however, their troubles are not over, because another evil awaits them… the very reason why they ended up in that maze in the first place.

“This children’s book is a delight! How can I get front row tickets?” – Francesca Watson, The Cat Deep in the countryside near Plucker’s Bottom stands Pluckerslea Hall, an English stately home dating back to the thirteenth century. Visiting furless folk are unaware of the secret tunnels that run beneath, and the music rooms, dormitories, dance studios and theatre fitted out for occupants of a much smaller stature. The occupants are cats! Cats wearing tights, tutus, make-up and wigs, and cats performing in ballets like Coppelia and Swan Lake. But when a beautiful gypsy cat warns of impending doom and trouble comes from the ruthless Bruiser Bumfluff, his fiendish crows and the cut-throat Black Treacle Farm Gang, the cats stop dancing, leaving their ballet master, Erico Poochetti the Shih Tzu, in tears. The future looks bleak for the Pusska Moggyinsky Ballet Company as an evil being plots revenge, lurking in the shadows and watching their every move. Can the ghostly presence of a magical Irish Lepremogg restore the cats’ amazing dancing paws of magic? Inspired by the books of Pamela Brown, Noel Streatfield and Gladys Malvern, the second book in Maria McArdle’s Pusska Moggyinsky Ballet Company series tells of a friendship between animals that would otherwise be enemies and their fears and determination to preserve their magical way of life. Dancing Paws of Magic contains a number of Maria’s own beautiful illustrations and will be enjoyed by children aged 9-11 years with a love of dancing, theatre and cats, as well as fans of her first book, Introducing the Pusska Moggyinsky Ballet Company.