Book News
This book is neither fish nor fowl. While its stated subject is the interplay between sprawling suburbs and the wildlife that those suburbs replace, it's just as much a collection of wildlife biologist DeStefano's reminiscences about his youth in a Boston suburb and about his decades working in wildlife conservation. Luckily for readers, the author's skills as a writer and storyteller make it easy to overlook any of the book's structural awkwardness. While the author gives a good explanation of the problems caused by the expansion of human settlement into wildlife habitat, he doesn't provide the large volume of anecdotes about human-wildlife encounters in the suburbs that some may be looking for. Still, any writer who can make readers anxious to read the next episode in the story of a female coyote living near a housing tract is well worth spending time with. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Booklist Reviews
In 2006, a coyote named Hal turned up in Central Park, evading park rangers and the NYPD for two whole days while underscoring the coyote's increasing prevalence in the population-dense Northeast. As adaptable as they are surreptitious, coyotes particularly love the suburbs, where food is abundant and natural predators rare. For wildlife biologist DeStefano, the coyote is thus an inspirational symbol of nature's resilience: a wild animal that has learned to thrive amid human sprawl without our consent and in spite of our perennial efforts to banish them from our midst. Narrating the travels of a plucky female coyote, the author explores humans' evolving relationship with nature and the violence of our light, noise, and traffic. Along the way, he offers us a glimpse at his own restless spirit, born in the Boston suburbs but drawn to the desert Southwest; resentful of human wastefulness yet exhilarated by the open road. DeStefano's willingness to probe his own ambivalence about the possibilities of coexistence with nature allows this selection to be about much more than just wild canines. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
Choice Reviews
In recent decades, urbanization and suburban sprawl have consumed large tracts of natural land and resulted in increasing numbers of encounters and conflicts between humans and wildlife. Not only have humans encroached into wildlife habitat, but many adaptable species, such as the coyote, have greatly expanded their geographic ranges. In Coyote at the Kitchen Door, DeStefano (natural resources conservation, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst) aims to provide a "synthesis of human development of the environment and its meaning for and impact on both wildlife and people." This is not a technical book but is intended to introduce the topic to a wide audience. Each chapter provides an introductory narrative relating the author's experiences with animals in the wild, followed by an excellent overview of some aspect of an urban/suburban wildlife issue; it concludes with a brief account about coyotes. The volume includes notes for those interested in digging deeper into the extensive scholarly literature. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate and general collections, all levels. Copyright 2010 American Library Association.