My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell

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Category: Biographical Acquired: Borrowed from T&B Library Read: October, 2008 Briefly: Precocious youngster narrates his family's four-year stay amidst the flora and fauna of the Greek Island of Corfu in the mid-1930's.

Summary: This book covers a snippet of the author's early adolescence, at a time when his family simply decided to move to a villa in Greece for a few years. How nice. Not only was it a good adventure for Gerald and his quirky brothers and sisters (and long-suffering mom), it was also the time when his lifelong interest in animals first began to take root. While others were swimming, shopping, boating or following other pursuits, he was climbing trees to find nests, or looking under rocks for spiders and scorpions. A good many of these creatures found their way back to the villa, which enlivens the story from time to time.

Here's what I didn't know. While googling the author's name to find a photo of the book cover, I discovered that the story is substantially true, and that he grew up to become a renowned naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist and TV presenter. Sort of a British Marlin Perkins, for those of you old enough to remember. He even received the Order of the British Empire. For more info on this interesting guy, take a look at his article in Wikipedia.