I’m happy to announce that my nonfiction memoir, Curious Creatures-Wondrous Waifs, My Life with Animals, has been reviewed in the September 2004 issue of Animal People, the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide.

Review

Kostro’s journey starts when he is a three-year-old living in the inner city with his Polish immigrant parents and grandparents. As a boy he often rescued animals; as a teenager he found summer camp a place of untold discovery; and his relationships with animals, especially his little dog Pepper, fared better than his marriage, which ended in divorce.

“I truly believe that my encounters with all sorts of animals have been an integral part of making me who I am today––an avowed ‘animal person,’” Kostro writes.

There are plenty of amusing stories. For example, he finds a baby robin that has fallen out of her nest. Up goes a huge ladder and the baby is returned to a full nest of robin chicks. As one chick is replaced and Kostro climbs down, another is pushed out and there begins a procession of returning robin chicks to the rather inadequate nest. A large crowd of neighbors gathers to watch. Eventually an onlooker yells out to Kostro to enlarge the nest. Thus the see-saw of rescuer and robins came to a happy ending for all.

Kostro describes the desolation resulting from urban decay and suburban sprawl, which kills the natural beauty of a city’s surroundings, and the impact that this has upon family values.

He emphasizes simple values that seem to have been lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday living.

Each chapter is an excellent bedtime story.

—Beverley Pervan