Rachel Poliquin – författare

From sixteenth-century cabinets of wonders to contemporary animal art, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing examines the cultural and poetic history of preserving animals in lively postures. But why would anyone want to preserve an animal, and what is this animal-thing now? Rachel Poliquin suggests that taxidermy is entwined with the enduring human longing to find meaning with and within the natural world. Her study draws out the longings at the heart of taxidermy—the longing for wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance. In so doing, The Breathless Zoo explores the animal spectacles desired by particular communities, human assumptions of superiority, the yearnings for hidden truths within animal form, and the loneliness and longing that haunt our strange human existence, being both within and apart from nature.

“Kids and adult alike will love poring over the different sections of this book and will delight in informing their friends and family members of the facts they've learned.”—School Library Journal ★A perfect book for engaging kids in STEM: This illustrated tour of our “leftover” body parts (like the appendix, or even goosebumps) introduces readers age 7-11 to the bizarre and fascinating science of evolution.Welcome to the weirdest museum you’ll ever explore—the one inside your body.Did you know your amazing, incredible body is a walking, talking museum of evolution? In The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers, tour guides Wisdom Tooth and Disappearing Kidney lead readers through a wacky museum dedicated to vestigial structures: body parts that were essential to our ancestors but are no longer useful to us—even though they’re still hanging around.From goosebumps and hiccups to exploding organs and monkey muscles, each room in the museum shows us that these parts have stories to tell us about our past. By the time we make it to the gift shop, we’ll understand that evolution is not only messy and imperfect, but also ongoing. Our bodies are constantly changing along with the environment we live in—and there’s so much that is still unknown, just waiting to be discovered.Engaging, hilarious, and a visual treat, The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers is a place you’ll want to visit again and again.

From the award-winning creators of The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers, comes a wonderfully fun—sometimes gross—exploration of the endocrine and exocrine systems.A perfect book for engaging kids ages 8-12 in STEM.Step right up for a tour of one incredible factory—a fascinating system inside your body!The human body is all kinds of amazing. Inside you, systems are working hard to make sure your heart doesn’t beat too fast or too slow, you aren’t too hot or too cold, and you don’t fall asleep on your desk at school (most of the time, anyways). No matter what you do, your body tends to exist in a state of balance. In fact, a happy, healthy life depends on that balance. And that balance depends on glands.In The Gland Factory, you’ll get an up-close look at your endocrine and exocrine systems, where glands are feverishly swelling, shrinking, oozing, healing, digesting, and maintaining balance. Extensive backmatter includes a suggested further reading list, a “Gland Factory Survey” and a detailed glossary of all the wonderfully gross glands explored.Each stop on the tour introduces fascinating facts about how some key glands and hormones work, including:The Mouth Machine (the salivary glands)The Sugar Boss (the pancreas)The Main Control (the hypothalamus)When the factory is infiltrated by nasty germs, the immune system springs into action, fighting hard to restore order. A little weird, a little gross, and more than a little fun, The Gland Factory is an unforgettable exploration of the human body!

With their unique scaly tail, chainsaw teeth, powerful scent and astonishing architectural prowess, beavers are unlike any other creature in the world. Not surprisingly, the beaver has played a fascinating role in human history. Beaver explores the lives and characteristics of these exceptional creatures, from their soft fur to their architecture and their ecological transformations, revealing beavers to be survivors capable of withstanding ice ages, major droughts and predators, except one: humans.Widely hunted for their fur, beavers were a driving force behind the colonization of North America and remain Canada’s national symbol today. Castoreum, the pungent musk secreted by beavers, was long used in medicine and has been an ingredient in perfumery and food production. From depictions of beavers in the fables of Aesop and Native American mythology to contemporary environmental politics, Rachel Poliquin investigates the facts and fictions of beaver chain gangs, beaver-flavoured ice cream and South America’s ever-growing beaver population.This beautifully illustrated book, filled with the strange history and improbable tales of the beaver, will delight all readers.