March CoverCat: farm animals on cover

This month's cover cat theme is barnyard animals. Such animals may be on the cover or included in the title of the book. Both fiction and non-fiction will work!



Titles with barnyard animals:
The Velveteen Rabbit
War Horse
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, The Horse
The Black Stallion
Peter Rabbit
The Ugly Duckling
The Red Pony
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Horse Whisperer
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

Non-fiction:
The Good Good Pig
What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird
Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World
Fowl Play: A History of the Chicken from Dinosaur to Dinner Plate

The Wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php?title=CoverCAT_2025

What will you be reading?

I'm going to plan on reading Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah, which has some goats crossing through a market on the cover.

Editing to say that I'll leave the above book there as a potential suggestion, but I've realized it's the third in a series, so I'm going to read Damascus Nights instead, which has a number of creatures on the cover, including a donkey.

I've started Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy Hughes more than once, but this time I'm going to finish it because it will count for both this CAT and the ColourCAT.

Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti has a horse on the cover and it will help with the A for AlphaKIT

I have a few books that will fit this theme but right nos the front runner is Chicken Boy by Arthur Parkinson which has a couple of hens on the cover.

I just got a new book entitled The Barn in Winter that features many barnyard animals on the cover.

Not as many as I hoped. I think I will be reading All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie

I'll be reading one of these--I think each cover has at least a sheep or a horse or a cow on the cover:



I love the way the individual covers make one seamless collage.

I am reading a cozy mystery Turkeys and Thanksgiving

I will read Across the Plains in 1884 which has cattle on the cover.

Barnheart by Jenna Woginrich. I have all Jenna's books and love them all - time for a reread!

I'm going to read Fowl Eulogies by Lucie Rico.

Buffalo can be farmed:
Where the Buffalo Roam / Anne Matthews

Also, possibly:
Don't Turn Your Back in the Barn / David Perrin

Does Rabbit Hole count for a farm animal?

I’m going to listen to the audiobook of Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, which has a rooster on the cover:

Finished Damascus Nights, and absolutely loved it. Full review written.

>14 GraceCollection: Sure!

I read Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung.

I just finished Firebrand by Kristen Britain, which has a horse on the cover -- though the characters would be appalled at the idea of their horses doing farm work!

I completed Hadji Murad by Leon Tolstoy which has a horse on the cover.

l love the illustration at the top of thread, it reminds me of those in my family's set of World Book encyclopedia we had when I was a child. For this month's Cover Cat I read Return to Thrush Green by Miss Read. 3.5*

I read Steak by Mark Schatzker, which was very enjoyable if you share the author's appreciation of a truly delicious steak, which I certainly do.

I have completed my read of Chicken Boy by Arthur Parkinson.

I just finished Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men on the Bummel, which has a chicken on the cover (bottom left-hand corner).

I read Fowl Eulogies by Lucie Rico, translated by Daria Chernysheva

Prairie Ostrich by Tamai Kobayashi
Since eight-year old Egg Murakami’s brother died her mother has taken to drinking whiskey and her father moved into the barn with the ostriches. Egg is trying to make sense of life, helped by her sister, who is in love with her best friend and tells Egg familiar stories but changes the endings to happy ones. They run an ostrich farm and are the only Japanese in this rural Alberta town, appropriately named Bittercreek, suggesting heartbreak ahead. This is Egg’s story and her details are revealed slowly in this enchanting book.

Animals in Translation (depending on your edition, cover features a horse, multiple horses, cows, or a hound dog)

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There was a nice balance between scientific study, personal experience, and educated conjecture that went into it, and I don't use the term conjecture negatively — when she is theorizing, Grandin is explicit about that fact, and uses her professional experience, scientific studies, or both to back up her theories, which are always interesting even if I don't always think they're true.

I do want to mention that some of the book predicates on the idea that autistic brains are closer to animal brains than 'normal human' brains are. The continued use of 'normal' to mean 'non-autistic' was a little grating to me, but might be more of a barrier to reading to some, so I want to mention that upfront. Furthermore, the idea that autistic brains are more animalistic than non-autistic brains has been used for a long time to dehumanize autistic people and justify abuse, so this book as a whole might be triggering to some on that basis, although it strongly advocates for treating even animals as complex individuals with social and emotional needs, so I don't think someone from the justifying-abuse-against-autistic-people crowd would enjoy this book.

This book is from 2005, so some of the science that a discussion or two relies on is outdated, notably the idea of an 'alpha wolf' or 'alpha dog'. Nonetheless, there is a large amount of the book I found new and interesting, which I discussed in more detail in my personal thread here.

Turkeys and Thanksgiving by Leena Clover ★★

Pelican Cove is gearing up for a grand Thanksgiving. Local amateur sleuth Jenny King and the Magnolias are busy planning the big dinner, salivating over pumpkin pie and turducken. When an eccentric old man turns up at the Boardwalk Cafe moaning about his missing turkey, Jenny doesn't have the heart to turn him away. This time, she even has the sheriff's blessing because the police can't be bothered to look for a missing bird. Meanwhile, Jenny is also roped in to judge the big turkey competition in town. Can she juggle everything and still have time to make her special green bean casserole? (description from Amazon)

This short mystery, part of the Pelican Cove series is 85% talking about food and 10% trying to solve the mystery, with the remaining 5% overintroducing the characters. I figured out the ending way too early. She solves the mystery too late, the missing turkey is eaten.

I read All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. My copy has a horse, a pig, a cow, and a dog on the cover.

I finished the audiobook of Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, with a rooster on the cover as shown in >15 Charon07: above. It was disappointing.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
A reflective coming-of-age novel from Norway. The writing style is quiet and nostalgic without being wistful. Petterson provides an excellent sense of place and time.

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales has a cat on the cover. Based on the story, it is more of a mythical beast than a barn cat, but I think this is as good as it gets for me.

Rabbit Hole

This story starts on the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of our main character's sister, Angie, when Teddy was 16 and Angie was 18. On this day, the anniversary of the disappearance, Teddy's father commits suicide. As she cleans out her father's office, which used to be Teddy and Angie's shared bedroom, Teddy finds the notes her father left behind as he continued to investigate Angie's disappearance — and stumbles upon 'true crime' communities on places like Reddit, and all the comments they have made about her, her sister, and their family.

I'm not a huge mystery reader, so others may have different experiences, but I found the reveals satisfying. Sometimes I would put the pieces together a few paragraphs before Teddy did, and sometimes I was totally surprised but could see all the clues in hindsight. Generally, after reading a few chapters, my heart was thumping and my mind was racing. I did cry a few times during this book!

Teddy is the kind of main character who is in a really tough situation and doesn't handle it perfectly. At times I felt that I might have done the same things she did, but at other times I felt her actions were completely unjustifiable and made her less sympathetic. If that is the sort of book that can't hold your interest, I would recommend skipping this one. I also want to note that it had a lot more graphic sex scenes than is to my taste.

However, overall this was a very gripping mystery, investigating ideas like who our family really are and who a tragedy belongs to.

COMPLETED All The Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie