{"id":991,"date":"2023-10-05T15:31:53","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T19:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/?page_id=991"},"modified":"2023-10-09T09:29:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T13:29:11","slug":"review-becoming-a-good-creature","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/review-becoming-a-good-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Becoming a Good Creature"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Cover<\/figure>\n<\/div>

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\nBecoming a Good Creature<\/em> by Sy Montgomery, illustrated by Rebecca Green
\nBoston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020<\/strong>\n

Reviewed By Samantha Piede<\/em>
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Many of us in our youth had fanciful visions of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Naturalist Sy Montgomery was no different. In the opening of Becoming a Good Creature<\/em> (2020), she tells readers that her childhood ambition was \u201cto be a dog\u201d because she wanted to \u201cunderstand the sounds of [her] neighborhood, both wild and tame.\u201d As such, she spent a great deal of her early childhood \u2018doggedly\u2019 following her Scottish terrier, Molly. \u201cSo, I watched her. I listened,\u201d she tells readers. \u201cAnd I learned that if we pay attention, the world outside beckons us.\u201d In the paired illustration, carefully rendered in acrylic by prolific children\u2019s book illustrator Rebecca Green (How to Make Friends with a Ghost<\/em>), a young Montgomery is pictured kneeling over a mound of earth, following the guide of Molly\u2019s pointed snout. Molly signals towards a tiny earthworm poking out of the soil: something a young human girl might have otherwise missed. Though Montgomery outgrew her canine ambitions, the spirit of this inquiry carried forward into her professional life. She would go on to conduct field research across multiple continents and author 34 books on animal life. Though she has had a prolific career working on a host of zoological ventures with figures like Temple Grandin and networks like National Geographic, she still credits Molly with being her \u201cfirst teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becoming a Good Creature<\/em> is an abridged version of Montgomery\u2019s best-selling memoir, How to Be a Good Creature (2018), retooled for a younger audience. The book outlines a series of encounters she has had with animals: both domestic (her pet pig named for conductor Christopher Hogwood; her border collie, Thurber, with one blind eye) and wild (the emu family she follows in Australia; the gorillas she meets in Zaire). Montgomery titles each section of the picture book with a moral lesson she has learned from her interactions with other species, such as \u201cLove Little Lives,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Be Afraid,\u201d and \u201cMake Your Own Family.\u201d This is not, however, a morally didactic move on her part; to simply extract the lessons and leave the anecdotes is to miss the keystone of what holds the larger structure of the book together. Rather, Montgomery frames each of these lessons as predicated on our receptivity to other lives. Our willingness to be attentive to other creatures \u2013 not just the ones like us with \u201ctwo legs,\u201d but also \u201cfour or even eight\u201d \u2013 opens up the possibility of finding something ethically significant in these encounters. She tells us that \u201call have taught me something important about how to be a good creature in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

Significantly, Montgomery never defines her idea of \u201cgoodness\u201d in explicit terms. Instead, her sense of how we approach \u2018becoming a good creature\u2019 is predicated on having these sorts of educative experiences with non-human creatures: on learning to see as they see. This is what is referred to, in philosophical terms, as expanding the moral imagination: our ability to act better is enabled by our ability to see more of the world as it actually is. This explains Montgomery\u2019s emphasis on from whom we can be \u2018taught\u2019. Framing the animals in each of the book\u2019s anecdotes not simply as objects of observation, but as teachers<\/em> grants them their own epistemology, their own ways of knowing, from which there is so much that we can learn.<\/p>\n

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\"Illustrated<\/figure>\n

\nArtwork by Rebecca Green from Becoming a Good Creature<\/em> \u00a9 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Throughout the book, Montgomery challenges anthropocentricity by encouraging readers to consider animals not merely in their relation to humans, but also as having their own integrity. This comes across especially strongly in the lesson \u201cLearn Forgiveness,\u201d which recounts Montgomery\u2019s interactions with a white-coated weasel who breaks into her chicken coop. She tells readers, \u201cThough tiny, weasels are fierce. They catch and eat animals much bigger than themselves. They even eat chickens!\u201d Given these circumstances, one might be inclined to view the weasel as primarily a menace: a malevolent force bent on destroying one\u2019s property and killing innocent hens. Instead, Montgomery recounts \u201clook[ing] into the weasel\u2019s black eyes\u201d and thinking, \u201cHow brave he was! And how beautiful, in his snowy winter coat.\u201d She recognizes that the act of breaking into a hen house during a winter storm \u2014 a time when subsistence is scarce \u2014 is an act of survival. The meaning of the act transforms; it becomes one for which she \u201ccouldn\u2019t be angry.\u201d Through seeing this encounter through the creature\u2019s eyes, Montgomery is able to forgive the weasel. <\/p>\n

Likewise, in \u201cFind Common Ground,\u201d Montgomery establishes that we do not need to see ourselves as entirely similar to an animal in order to find areas of commonality. Here, she recalls her interactions with an octopus at the New England Aquarium. \u201cOctavia had eight arms, three hearts, no bones,\u201d Montgomery relays. \u201cShe lived in the water. I live on land. What could we possibly have in common?\u201d After some time, they discover a way of interacting with one another that is mutually satisfying: their shared love of play, through which they could communicate with one another and \u201cbecame friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breadth of Montgomery\u2019s ethical encounters with wildlife offers points of reflection for readers of all ages. If Montgomery can have these sorts of experiences with animals that are familiar (like her dog Molly) and ones that are far removed from human life (the weasel, the octopus), perhaps there is potential to draw ethical wisdom from any<\/em> living creature. Reading this book, students are primed to pay close attention to other species as sources of knowledge and ask themselves: \u201cHow might a creature that is equipped for this world so differently from me be attuned to something in this world that I cannot see on my own? And what might I learn from this encounter about being a better creature myself?\u201d Students with pets may be especially equipped to offer lived examples from their homes: a dog who senses before we do that someone is at the door; a cockatoo who picks up on ultraviolet light. Teachers interested in extending the experience may even consider offering opportunities for nature study, asking students to keep a \u2018science journal\u2019 through which enter into close observation of the same sort of creature over regular, sustained periods of time. These recognitions may encourage readers to take up Montgomery\u2019s stance towards the myriad other species with whom we share the world: to approach them with the kind of deep respect and curiosity that makes us receptive to what they have to teach us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of us in our youth had fanciful visions of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Naturalist Sy Montgomery was no different. In the opening of Becoming a Good Creature (2020), she tells readers that her childhood ambition was \u201cto be a dog\u201d because she wanted to \u201cunderstand the sounds of [her] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":177,"parent":0,"menu_order":90,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-991","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/991\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}