"Renard mingles wonder and humor in a series of miniature portraits of subjects drawn from the natural world: dogs, cats, pigs, roses, snails, trees and birds of all sorts, humans of course, and even a humble potato. Ranging from a sentence to several pages, Renard's sketches are ...compress[ed] and descripti[ve], capturing both appearance and behavior through a choice of details that makes the familiar unfamiliar and yet surprisingly true to life."--from publisher description.