Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, author and scriptwriter who writes for children as well as adults. She is author of more than 20 books,including The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, which was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a New York Times Bestseller. Her most popular book is The Good Good Pig, the bestselling memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood. Her other notable titles include Journey of the Pink Dolphins, Spell of the Tiger, Search for the Golden Moon Bear, and The Soul of an Octopus. She has been described as "part Indiana Jones, part Emily Dickinson".[1] Her book for children, Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea was the recipient of the 2007 Orbis Pictus Award and was selected as an Honor book for the ALA Sibert Award.[2]

For a half-hour National Geographic TV segment, she scripted and appeared in Spell of the Tiger, based on her book of that title. Also for National Geographic TV she developed and scripted Mother Bear Man based on the work of Ben Kilham, who raises and released orphaned black bears, which won a Chris Award. [3]

Author Vicki Croke asked Sy what she has learned, not just about an animal’s natural history, but lessons about life. Sy answered: “How to be a good creature. How do you be compassionate?… I think that animals teach compassion better than anything else and compassion doesn’t necessarily just mean a little mouse with a sore foot and you try to fix it. It means getting yourself inside the mind and heart of someone else. Seeing someone’s soul, looking for their truth. Animals teach you all of that and that’s how you get compassion and heart.” [4]

Personal life

Sy Montgomery was born on February 7, 1958 in Frankfurt, Germany.[5] She is a 1975 graduate of Westfield High School, Westfield, New Jersey, and a 1979 graduate of Syracuse University, a triple major with dual degrees in magazine journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and in French language and literature and in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Keene State College in 2004, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Franklin Pierce University and also from Southern New Hampshire University in 2011.[6]

She lives in Hancock, New Hampshire with her husband the writer Howard Mansfield.[7]

Awards and honors

List of works

For adults:[11]

For children:[12]

Praise

“Equal parts poet and scientist.” —The New York Times [13]

“Part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson.” —The Boston Globe [14]

“Sy Montgomery has insight into the Others that every nature writer on this continent envies. I am no exception. Clear, emotionally telling and always right to the point, her accounts of the other forms of life are without peer.” —Farley Mowat, author of Never Cry Wolf [15]

Few writers—or human beings—fuse intelligence and heart as completely as Sy Montgomery. —Beth Kephart, author of Seeing Past Z, and Still Love in Strange Places [16]

“Montgomery gives herself over so wholeheartedly to animals, and other humans who share her passion for creatures both rare and ubiquitous, that her nature chronicles are uniquely radiant.-- American Library Association’s Booklist [17]

The only shaman that I know of, and certainly the only one I know personally. Sy, as shamans do, roves the earth relentlessly: there have been sightings of her from the Caribbean to Sunderbans (a non-mythical place, which hovers somewhere between India and Bangladesh, and where non-mythical tigers regularly hunt non-mythical humans) with lengthy touch-downs also in Cambodia, the Amazon, Tahiti, New Guinea, Mongolia, and Manitoba. On her journeys she communes at length with birds, mammals, and sea creatures — surreal ones such as pink dolphins, ground-dwelling Kakapo parrots, golden moon bears, giant tarantulas, white sharks, tree kangaroos, snow leopards, and the giant Cassowary bird, and … octopuses (not octopii), but she is equally tight with domestic animals such as pigs, chickens, and cockatoos.-- Phil Pochoda, retired publishing veteran (Simon & Schuster, Prentice Hall Press, Pantheon Books, University of Michigan Press, and the University Press of New England) [18]


References

  1. ↑ http://www.chelseagreen.com/authors/sy_montgomery/
  2. ↑ http://www.papertigers.org/interviews/archived_interviews/montgomery.html
  3. ↑ http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/03/01/html/ft_20020301.5.html
  4. ↑ http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/09/09/animal-emotions-croke
  5. ↑ http://www.chelseagreen.com/authors/sy_montgomery/
  6. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/?page_id=29
  7. ↑ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13364.Sy_Montgomery
  8. ↑ "2015 National Book Awards". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  9. ↑ Alter, Alexandra (19 November 2015). "Ta-Nehisi Coates Wins National Book Award". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  10. ↑ "Nonfiction Award - Previous Winners". childrensbookguild.org. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  11. ↑ http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/13364.Sy_Montgomery
  12. ↑ http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/13364.Sy_Montgomery
  13. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/about-sy/
  14. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/about-sy/
  15. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/about-sy/
  16. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/the-good-good-pig-reviews/
  17. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/birdology-reviews/
  18. ↑ http://symontgomery.com/news/
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