With this selection of books about animals We want to celebrate this day of the festival of San Anton, its patron, with great tradition in Spain. Because they have always been great protagonists in literature. Although dogs and cats have the most stories dedicated to them, in reality we can find any animal in titles from Latin classics like Aesop's fables, for example, to many other recent ones based on real events. Of course, what they have starred in the most are stories children, and they also hit hard in genres like comic (there we have Blacksad, for example), but without a doubt they always set the special tone in any moment and story. We take a look at these titles.
Books about animals — selection
The long way home —Alan Hlad
Alan Hlad He usually includes animals in his novels, this is an example and, furthermore, it is based on a real event, that of the history of the Operation Columba, devised by Winston Churchill during World War II, in which thousands of pigeons were used for communications. So we are in September 1940 and we meet Susan and his grandfather Bertie, who are dedicated to the breeding and training of homing pigeons which the Army uses to transmit information about enemy movements in occupied France.
On the other hand, in the United States, a american pilot called Ollie He decides to join the RAF and thus comes into contact with the National Pigeon Service, where meet Susan. In addition to becoming friends, they will be selected to be part of a secret mission. But plane Ollie's shot down into enemy lines and Susan will realize that they may never see each other again. However, she is Duchess, his most faithful dove, who will show that hope should never be lost.
Hlad also signs The light of hope, which is again based on a true story and is set during World War I. Here the protagonists are german shepherds who integrated the first training school de Dogs to help soldiers who lost their sight.
Where the hills howl - Francisco Narla
The protagonist of this novel is a wolf, one of those animals that have always given all the play in literature. Set in the Roman age, we have a group of legionaries faithful to Julius Caesar who pose as vermin and they offer themselves to a tribe of the Gallaecia to put an end to the wolves that are attacking their livestock. But their real intention is to give them the insights of the place where the mythical gold mines to finance Caesar's campaign to confront the Senate.
The question is that they will kill a pregnant wolf and his companion, the last surviving male, a cunning and enormous wolf, will undertake a very long journey chasing them that will take him to Rome simply to get revenge.
The book of the jungle —Rudyard Kipling
It is impossible to talk about animal books and leave out the title that is possibly the epitome of them: the immortal work of Rudyard Kipling. And it never goes out of style and continues to add thousands of readers over time.
Its protagonists are a universal archetype that brings together the best and the worst of human beings in the enormous jungle that is the world. They are all, the Wolves, Bears, panthers, Tigers, reptiles, monkeys... And possibly the most dangerous of all: the human.
Rebelion on the farm —George Orwell
Napoleon is possibly the most famous pig in literature and the protagonist of this satire of the Russian Revolution and the triumph of Stalinism, which Orwell wrote in 1945. A milestone of contemporary culture, it is one of the most scathing books of all time.
The rebellion of the animals is a whole treatise on how the seeds of totalitarianism are filtered in its seemingly ideal organization that leads the party of pigs and also with its other side of the cruelest oppressor. His reading is always recommended, and it is much more so in these times that we live in.
A street cat named Bob —James Bowen
Another of those animal books based on real life tells the story of the schizophrenic and drug-addicted street musician. James Bowen, that one day he found an injured red-haired cat on the landing of his apartment. At that moment she couldn't imagine how his life was going to change, since he lived on the streets of London and the last thing he could afford was a pet. But the cat was very smart and James decided to keep him and call him Bob. They quickly became inseparable and his varied, comical and sometimes dangerous adventures ended up healing his wounds.
James decided to tell this story of improvement in the book, which was a bestseller and of which a few years ago a Film adaptation, which also starred Bob, who died in 2020.