Once again, Bidner has created a delightful study that presents scientific information in a fun and accessible way. Children will enjoy learning how their cuddly domesticated kitties evolved from bigger, more ferocious cats, and what traits they still have in common with lions, tigers, panthers, and the rest of the feline family. Everything about the book is appealing, from the attractive self-contained spreads to the captions, bold headers, and blurbs that communicate concepts quickly.

The author who revealed the secret lives of dogs in the best-selling The Hidden Life of Dogs offers a journey into the hidden life of cats and reports that cats, surprisingly, are not solitary beings. Reissue.

Describes the behavior, physical characteristics, habitat, and life cycle of Siberian tigers.

Once again, Bidner has created a delightful study that presents scientific information in a fun and accessible way. Children will enjoy learning how their cuddly domesticated kitties evolved from bigger, more ferocious cats, and what traits they still have in common with lions, tigers, panthers, and the rest of the feline family. Everything about the book is appealing, from the attractive self-contained spreads to the captions, bold headers, and blurbs that communicate concepts quickly.

Board book edition of the best-selling winner of the Waterstones Childrens Book Prize, Illustrated Book Category.

The Way of Cats is a way of playing games with our cat. These communication, training, and affection games are fun and easy to learn. Then we have well-behaved and happy cats.

Provides information on adopting a kitten, including advice on communicating with a cat, grooming, feeding, health care, neutering, traveling with a cat, and handling problem behavior.

Drawing on dramatic accounts by European colonials, and on detailed studies by folklorists and anthropologists, this work explores intriguing age-old Asian beliefs and claims that man-eating tigers and "little tigers," or leopards alike, were in various ways supernatural. It is a serious work based on extensive research, written in a lively style. Fundamental to the book is the evocation of a long-vanished world. When a man-eater struck in colonial times, people typically said it was a demon sent by a deity, or even the deity itself in animal form, punishing transgressors and being guided by its victims' angry spirits. Colonials typically dismissed this as superstitious nonsense but given traditional ideas about the close links between people, tigers and the spirit world, it is quite understandable. Other man-eaters were said to be shapeshifting black magicians. The result is a rich fund of tales from India and the Malay world in particular, and while some people undoubtedly believed them, others took advantage of man-eaters to persecute minorities as the supposed true culprits. The book explores the prejudices behind these witch-hunts, and also considers Asian weretiger and wereleopard lore in a wider context, finding common features with the more familiar werewolves of medieval Europe in particular.

What prompts children to tell stories? What does the word "story" mean to a child at two or five years of age? The Folkstories of Children, first published in 1981, features nearly five hundred stories that were volunteered by fifty children between the ages of two and ten and transcribed word for word. The stories are organized chronologically by the age of the teller, revealing the progression of verbal competence and the gradual emergence of staging and plot organization. Many stories told by two-year-olds, for example, have only beginnings with no middle or end; the "narrative" is held together by rhyme or alliteration. After the age of three or four, the same children tell stories that feature a central character and a narrative arc. The stories also exhibit each child's growing awareness and management of his or her environment and life concerns. Some children see their stories as dialogues between teller and audience, others as monologues expressing concerns about fate and the forces of good and evil. Brian Sutton-Smith discusses the possible origins of the stories themselves: folktales, parent and teacher reading, media, required writing of stories in school, dreams, and play. The notes to each chapter draw on this context as well as folktale analysis and child development theory to consider why and how the stories take their particular forms. The Folkstories of Children provides valuable evidence and insight into the ways children actively and inventively engage language as they grow.

From the majestic Bengal tiger to the domesticated Siamese comes a meditation on cats from the bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Social Lives of Dogs From as far back in time as the disappearance of the dinosaurs, cats have occupied an important place in our evolutionary, social, and cultural history. The family of the cat is as diverse as it is widespread, ranging from the lions, tigers, and pumas of the African and Asian wilds to the domesticated cats of our homes, zoos, and circuses. When she witnesses her housecat, Rajah, effortlessly scare off two fully-grown deer, acclaimed anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas starts studying the links that bind the feline family together. Immersing herself in the subtle differences of their social orders, feeding behaviors, and means of communication, Thomas explores the nature of the cat, both wild and domestic, and the resilient streak that has ensured its survival over thousands of years.