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A pangolin's tongue is longer than its body. It keeps it furled in a nifty pouch near the hip. A swift flies 200,000 miles in its lifetime. That's far enough to get to the moon and back – then back to the moon. There's a fable that storks deliver babies. In fact, the Nazis used them to air-drop propaganda. Each of these animals is extraordinary. And each of them may soon disappear from the earth.
A lavishly illustrated compendium of the staggering lives of some of the world's most endangered animals, The Golden Mole is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck – to fall for the likes of the wondrous Pygmy Hippo, the seahorse, the narwhal and, as astonishing and endangered as them all, the human.
Katherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults, Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, and writes occasionally for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Times.
"From bears to bats to hermit crabs, a witty, intoxicating paean to Earth's wondrous creatures [...] shot through with Rundell's characteristic wit and swagger."
– Guardian
"A rare and magical book. I didn't want it to end."
– Bill Bryson
"A book as rare and precious as a golden mole. A joyous catalogue of curiosities that builds into a timely reminder that life on planet is worth our wonder."
– Frank Cottrell-Boyce
"A loving and lovely book."
– Sarah Moss
"Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power."
– Observer
"Deeply affecting, intimate and wildly funny [...] I loved it."
– Edmund de Waal
"A wondrous ode to nature's astonishing beauty – and an elegy for all the life we are in the midst of destroying. This is a book filled with love and hope and whiskers and wings, by turns ravishing and devastating. No one sings the praises of the world quite like Katherine Rundell."
– Amia Srinivasan
"Rundell is a class act."
– The Times
"Rundell is an astonishing young talent"
– Daily Mail
"Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power."
– Observer
"It is among my proudest boasts, that I was massive Rundell fan before she became a national treasure."
– Dan Snow
"Rundell's pen is gold-tipped."
– Sunday Times
"She's beguiling us with an exquisitely written bestiary of the world's most astonishing animals. I shall be jealously guarding my own copy and buying several more for Christmas presents."
– Jacqueline Wilson
"Teaming up with the illustrator Talya Baldwin, she has created a paper menagerie of twenty-two exquisite, daunting and vulnerable creatures."
– Literary Review
"Exquisitely written."
– Times
