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A California Bestiary
Inspired by medieval bestiaries, in which animals were presented in a fashion that favored the fanciful over the factual, Solnit and Caron have partnered to create their own book of magical beasts one in which the truth is stranger than fiction. Deeply aware of how much animal lore feeds the language of human imagination, Solnit uses her unique literary prowess to describe native California animals in such a way that they become as thrilling as any exotic creature of yore. From the bluebelly lizard and the California condor to the elephant seal and tule elk, this wondrous cast of characters reveal the depth of their magic. Enriched by Caron s illustrations, which keenly explore the play between human and animal realms, this collection will feed your dreams. This book was created in partnership with the Oakland Zoo which has just unveiled plans to create an ambitious native California animal exhibit where local species will be rehabilitated and cared for.
64 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1987
3 people are currently reading
386 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Solnit
117 books7,983 followersWriter, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 11, 2019
In the spirit of the medieval bestiary books which presented fanciful and imagined animals, this nifty little volume instead illustrates real creatures who are amazing in their own right. Plus, they are Californians, which would probably put them into the quirky category anyway.
BLUEBELLY LIZARD
This lizard has magical blood which eliminates Lyme disease! What the heck? This is why I admonish my patio cat (fenced-in enclosure) to stop hassling the local lizards as they are the toadstones who could save us.
TULE ELK
Large as a horse, the Tule Elk is not a deer but the smallest of American Elk. They have dark necks and when they move as herd, it appears as one undulating wave. We almost hunted them to extinction and now the state is protecting them.
These are just a couple of the wonderful selections from this book. The text by Rebecca Solnit provides enough description and wonder to keep the reader's interest, while the artwork by Mona Caron is liltingly lovely. This would make a nice gift for anyone interested in California nature or to help younger readers understand how precious nature can really be.
Book Season = Summer (sapphire dragons)
BLUEBELLY LIZARD
This lizard has magical blood which eliminates Lyme disease! What the heck? This is why I admonish my patio cat (fenced-in enclosure) to stop hassling the local lizards as they are the toadstones who could save us.
TULE ELK
Large as a horse, the Tule Elk is not a deer but the smallest of American Elk. They have dark necks and when they move as herd, it appears as one undulating wave. We almost hunted them to extinction and now the state is protecting them.
These are just a couple of the wonderful selections from this book. The text by Rebecca Solnit provides enough description and wonder to keep the reader's interest, while the artwork by Mona Caron is liltingly lovely. This would make a nice gift for anyone interested in California nature or to help younger readers understand how precious nature can really be.
Book Season = Summer (sapphire dragons)
May 19, 2025
A very small book showcasing 12 animals in California. A couple are now extinct, or nearly, while others have been close to extinction, yet rebounded successfully, such as the elephant seal. Then there are a few that are abundant.
Each animal is accompanied by a color image drawn by Mona Caron. The essays are short and informative. My only problem with the book is that it was entirely too short.
Each animal is accompanied by a color image drawn by Mona Caron. The essays are short and informative. My only problem with the book is that it was entirely too short.
March 21, 2019
Toads can't counteract poison, but bluebelly lizards, it is now known, have a mysterious property in their blood that eliminates Lyme disease from the infected ticks, in their nymph stages, that bite them. They may be why the West Coast is so much less infested with this pernicious disease than the East. The bluebelly's blood now is as marvelous as the toadstone then.
If this book had focused more tightly on the facts of each of the twelve chosen subjects and on delivering more facts like the above, it would have been really brilliant. As it is, though, it is clear Solnit chafed a bit against the constraints of the form. She wanders widely, dragging in species not under discussion, returning again and again to California's slow motion ecological collapse and only incidentally performing the 'bestiary' part of the bargain. Which, naturally, is the part I showed up for. But the disappointment is not too terrible. If anything, the main failing of the book is that it isn't much longer and embracing both more context (as a place for Solnit to delve into the research) and many more animals (for more facts and more art). As it stands, it is a depressing but enjoyable and all too short read. (Good companions are The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History and a nice history of the development of the Western United States - River Notes: A Natural and Human History of the Colorado is not really a good book, but it served some purpose here for me.) I am terribly partial to anything that has bluebelly lizards in it, but I think there is probably a little something for most people in this tiny work.
If this book had focused more tightly on the facts of each of the twelve chosen subjects and on delivering more facts like the above, it would have been really brilliant. As it is, though, it is clear Solnit chafed a bit against the constraints of the form. She wanders widely, dragging in species not under discussion, returning again and again to California's slow motion ecological collapse and only incidentally performing the 'bestiary' part of the bargain. Which, naturally, is the part I showed up for. But the disappointment is not too terrible. If anything, the main failing of the book is that it isn't much longer and embracing both more context (as a place for Solnit to delve into the research) and many more animals (for more facts and more art). As it stands, it is a depressing but enjoyable and all too short read. (Good companions are The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History and a nice history of the development of the Western United States - River Notes: A Natural and Human History of the Colorado is not really a good book, but it served some purpose here for me.) I am terribly partial to anything that has bluebelly lizards in it, but I think there is probably a little something for most people in this tiny work.
March 11, 2016
This is a little treasure book, small in physical size, but large indeed in beauty - Mona Caron's artwork is whimsical and lovely, and Rebecca Solnit's text informational with specific natural details while also wide-ranging in ideas, exploring what each creature might mean to us - both practically and in our imaginations. A lovely book!
May 1, 2010
I didn't know what to expect and was surprised it was such a tiny book. It covers 12 different California animals, but "covers" is a very loose description. The book is very spare in pretty much everything. It talks about the animals but just barely, then philosophizes, waxes poetic, or reflects on what the animal (or nature in general) might mean, but again, just barely, and in some fairly humdrum prose. A 20 minute read, with nicely done illustrations of the animals, and that's it. Aside from a few interesting facts, doesn't really do much.
August 14, 2016
Love the concept and execution of this tiny book, which is pretty far-ranging in the topics it covers, given its seemingly narrow scope and size. I only wish it would've been much longer - I somehow failed to realize that it was only 47 pages before I had it sent my way.
January 17, 2018
Cozy.
These twelve mini-essays, and accompanying art work, were done as a joint project with the Oakland Zoo, which was starting a display on California fauna, and Heyday books, the innovative, artsy-naturalist publisher out of Berkeley. Solnit is of course a perfect author for the work, incisive, closely associated with the Bay Area, and interested in nature and its many meanings.
As is clear from the title, the book takes its inspiration from Medieval bestiary, which collected reports of animals and associated facts, fables, and legends, sorting all of the information through a religious prism: what did a particular animal mean to a Christian?
Solnit follows this rubric, though the way she defines it necessarily leads her in different directions. She focuses on twelve California animals, and in a couple of hundred words glosses their biology, but mostly focuses on their meaning, sometimes at the level of the individual--what they mean to her, or someone she knows--other times pushing on to broader ideas.
A couple of these recur, and tie the essays together: that California is amazingly diverse, that there is wonder in even the smallest, and most common creatures, that almost all of the creatures are endangered (if not already drive extinct) and that part of what makes them wonderful--and makes their extinction so painful--is exactly that they transcend our ability to think: they are more than us, or our ideas about them, and in so being challenge humans to be better and to see their relationship to the universe in humbler ways.
I like these ideas, a lot. I like the images, a lot.
My main concern is that the book is too short. Twelve animals hardly scratches the surface of California beasts: she notes there are over 350 mammals in the state alone. I can go along with the very brief essays, but I want more of them, at least twice as many.
The book is cozy and comfortable, when it could have been a chance to be bigger and more challenging. It reads like a nice pamphlet that you could pick up in the gift store, though the hardcover and color printing make the book relatively expensive for its size--13 bucks isn't a lot, but there's less than fifty pages here.
I admire that everyone involved with this project was trying something a bit different. I just think they sold themselves, and readers, short. More animals would have given Solnit a chance to deepen, complicate, and expand her themes. Brevity, in this case, keeps a good book from being great.
These twelve mini-essays, and accompanying art work, were done as a joint project with the Oakland Zoo, which was starting a display on California fauna, and Heyday books, the innovative, artsy-naturalist publisher out of Berkeley. Solnit is of course a perfect author for the work, incisive, closely associated with the Bay Area, and interested in nature and its many meanings.
As is clear from the title, the book takes its inspiration from Medieval bestiary, which collected reports of animals and associated facts, fables, and legends, sorting all of the information through a religious prism: what did a particular animal mean to a Christian?
Solnit follows this rubric, though the way she defines it necessarily leads her in different directions. She focuses on twelve California animals, and in a couple of hundred words glosses their biology, but mostly focuses on their meaning, sometimes at the level of the individual--what they mean to her, or someone she knows--other times pushing on to broader ideas.
A couple of these recur, and tie the essays together: that California is amazingly diverse, that there is wonder in even the smallest, and most common creatures, that almost all of the creatures are endangered (if not already drive extinct) and that part of what makes them wonderful--and makes their extinction so painful--is exactly that they transcend our ability to think: they are more than us, or our ideas about them, and in so being challenge humans to be better and to see their relationship to the universe in humbler ways.
I like these ideas, a lot. I like the images, a lot.
My main concern is that the book is too short. Twelve animals hardly scratches the surface of California beasts: she notes there are over 350 mammals in the state alone. I can go along with the very brief essays, but I want more of them, at least twice as many.
The book is cozy and comfortable, when it could have been a chance to be bigger and more challenging. It reads like a nice pamphlet that you could pick up in the gift store, though the hardcover and color printing make the book relatively expensive for its size--13 bucks isn't a lot, but there's less than fifty pages here.
I admire that everyone involved with this project was trying something a bit different. I just think they sold themselves, and readers, short. More animals would have given Solnit a chance to deepen, complicate, and expand her themes. Brevity, in this case, keeps a good book from being great.
August 29, 2025
This book was written by Rebecca Solnit and illustrated by Mona Caron. It was written to demonstrate the diversity of the wildlife that populates California. The following are highlighted; the acorn woodpecker, the bluebelly or Western fence lizard, the California condor, the California grizzly, the California ground squirrel, the Chinook salmon, the desert tortoise, the elephant seal, the mission blue butterfly, the Monarch butterfly, the mountain lion and the Tule elk.
I learned a lot of interesting facts from this book. One reason there is so much less Lyme Disease in the western states is that the Bluebelly lizard has a component in its blood that wipes out the virus in infected ticks. Monarch butterflies mate for hours with one partner and only lays eggs on the milkweed plant. California ground squirrels are immune to rattlesnake bites. The mountain lion is not endangered and is found more and more in inhabited areas and there are valid reports of more attacks, injuries and deaths in humans from the lion.
As interesting as the text was, the illustrations definitely deserve some mention as well. Mona Caron comes from a family of illustrators and is known as one of the area's foremost muralists. The illustrations of these creatures are true to life and colorful, showing the creature in all its various appearances. An interesting book for those interested in nature, particularly that of California.
I learned a lot of interesting facts from this book. One reason there is so much less Lyme Disease in the western states is that the Bluebelly lizard has a component in its blood that wipes out the virus in infected ticks. Monarch butterflies mate for hours with one partner and only lays eggs on the milkweed plant. California ground squirrels are immune to rattlesnake bites. The mountain lion is not endangered and is found more and more in inhabited areas and there are valid reports of more attacks, injuries and deaths in humans from the lion.
As interesting as the text was, the illustrations definitely deserve some mention as well. Mona Caron comes from a family of illustrators and is known as one of the area's foremost muralists. The illustrations of these creatures are true to life and colorful, showing the creature in all its various appearances. An interesting book for those interested in nature, particularly that of California.
January 25, 2025
“Tortoises live a long time, though desert tortoises spend so much of their time doing nothing in the cool darkness of their burrows... that it could be said they live a short, quiet life played out very, very slowly, a movie moving by at a frame a minute.” A California Bestiary is a beautifully illustrated guide to the varied and beautiful animal life in California, animals endangered and plentiful, some the obvious products of their environments and some seeming to defy the natural world they inhabit. Mona Caron’s twelve gorgeous illustrations are accompanied by Solnit’s thoughtful blend of nature writing, biography, and socio-political/historical journalism.
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June 9, 2024this reminded me of reading zoobooks as a child except way more lyrical and about climate change. pretty and cute illustrations :)
April 24, 2011
If the title captures you -- the thought of medieval guides to mythical beasts being applied to a present-day coastal state's animal population -- then you can surely spare the fifteen minutes it will take to read through this slender volume. You may spend longer, pausing to wonder at odd facts or lingering over the charming illustrations.
This is not a dense work; do not open it expecting a full-fledged encyclopedia of Californian fauna, although a variety is presented within its short selection. Do not chafe at the gradual introductions and confiding, scholarly airs, and be surprised at discovering that the western fence lizard's blood can cure ticks of Lyme disease.
Quite an enchanting mix of modern sensibilities, nods to medieval tomes, and a cast of characters that may be familiar, but all the same enjoyable to read about.
This is not a dense work; do not open it expecting a full-fledged encyclopedia of Californian fauna, although a variety is presented within its short selection. Do not chafe at the gradual introductions and confiding, scholarly airs, and be surprised at discovering that the western fence lizard's blood can cure ticks of Lyme disease.
Quite an enchanting mix of modern sensibilities, nods to medieval tomes, and a cast of characters that may be familiar, but all the same enjoyable to read about.
March 28, 2010
This is a simple book packed with great information presented in a dazzling manner. Not only does it educate readers on a few key animals native to California such as the tule elk and the blue belly lizard, but it also spins an easy to read, lovely story about these creatures which is unlike more formal educational animal books which can be quite boring. The illustrations are clean and simple and anecdotal tidbits are also included that make this book a great read for not just educational purposes.
December 18, 2010
Using twelve animals which live or lived in California as a start, Solnit writes beautifully about the history, fables, present and future of this state for which she has a strong affinity. The bestiary is a framework for comments about a lot of other things. It's all in the context.
The drawings are simple and elegant. This is a wonderful little book.
The drawings are simple and elegant. This is a wonderful little book.
April 10, 2016
Musings on a few Californian animals, with accompanying plates. Slight but pleasant -- Solnit can be counted on for thoughtful and polished prose, and Caron's illustrations reminded me of the animal coloring books I had as a child (in a good way).
January 21, 2011
the best writing by Solnit i've read so far. this is a book for gifts. i ended up reading one chapter each day, they're only a couple pages long but v. deep.
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March 1, 2015beautiful illustrations and a lovely way to incorporate environmentalism into stories of our fellow beings.
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June 12, 2015591.9794 S688 2010
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews