Those of the Forest

by Wallace Byron Grange

I got this book thru Paperback Swap because it won the Burroughs medal for nature writing in 1955. It tells of the life in a northern forest, describing all the activities and habits of the creatures that live there. Opens with a snowshoe rabbit taking shelter during a snowstorm, and follows the rabbit throughout a year. Other animals are observed as the rabbit sees them or crosses their paths. Had a lot of potential, but sad to say, the book was boring. The lengthy descriptions of plant life were unsuccessful at painting a picture in my mind, the passages telling what animals did were just that- telling, without any extra flair or feeling. And then there were statements of things like how the air that touched a rabbit's eye had traveled so many billions of miles from the sun, or how far the wind had gone, or how everything is connected via the molecules that move from one living thing to the next when they're consumed by each other... all very well to point out but I've heard it before and it got tedious again and again. Plus the rhetorical questions sprinkled throughout the text started to annoy me as well. I just wasn't enjoying it, so put the book down at about page 50. Had barely begun to hit spring. Disappointed.

Abandoned ....... 314 pages, 1953