Publishers Weekly
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In this plaintive if occasionally grating history, Allen (Broken Heart, Shared Heart, Healing Heart), an Australian minister, presents intimate portraits of 31 extinct species. She recounts each animal’s story from its own perspective, as when she describes how hungry sailors hunted the manatee-like Steller’s sea cow to extinction in the 1700s: “Our tasty flesh, wonderful fat and hides, which would be made into shoes and belts, led to our downfall.” Reconstructing how species likely behaved in the wild, Allen notes that quagga, a subspecies of zebra, congregated near hartebeest and ostriches, whose superior eyesight and sense of smell helped alert the quagga to predators. Though the first-person voice aspires to instill empathy, it instead comes across as childish (“The ‘dodo’. What a stupid name! Sets me up as a thing of ridicule”). The fascinating trivia does a better job of driving home the wondrous biodiversity lost in the extinction of any species. For instance, Allen describes the remarkable reproductive practices of the female gastric-brooding frog, which would suspend the production of gastric acid before swallowing her own fertilized eggs and then wait for them to grow into frogs in her upper intestine and crawl out of her mouth about six weeks later. The annoying narrative voice aside, this will hold the interest of animal lovers. Photos. (Aug.)

Library Journal
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This beautifully illustrated book serves as much as a simulacrum of private, deeply personal grief and loss as it is a repository of stories and histories. Allen (Broken Heart, Shared Heart, Healing Heart: Navigating the Loss of Your Pet) has created a deliberate, well-documented archive of 31 extinct animal species, from aurochs to quagga, with stories of what they were like in life and how they disappeared. Still, the book is much more than that and includes significant research and meditation on grief processes, especially but not exclusively about extinction. Allen revivifies extinct animals so that, briefly, they seem to breathe, to have voices. In doing so, she highlights the importance of recognizing how situated and contextually dependent knowledge (of self, of others) is and how, through storytelling, people can preserve memories of lost lives along with their grief. In doing so, grief becomes a continually motivating force that deepens commitments to knowledge, advocacy, and change. VERDICT By giving voices and representation to 31 extinct species, Allen shows how these creatures lived and how to listen wholeheartedly to them and the other species (estimates range from 20,000 to two million) that went extinct during the last century.—Emily Bowles

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Australian author Allen gives voice to 31 extinct species worldwide, such as the baiji (Yangtze River) dolphin and the ivory-billed woodpecker. She devotes a whole chapter to the act of memorializing grief. Entries begin with a listing of the genus and species name and date of extinction and include at least one illustration. Each profile is a mix of a love letter and a eulogy from the perspective of the extinct species. For example, the Steller’s sea cow laments, “Our hearts were big enough to have lived at peace with humans, but you chose otherwise.” Allen also speaks to the many causes of extinction, including climate change and habitat destruction, and encourages readers to work to save endangered species. De-extinction, resurrection science, and Lazarus species are also discussed. Some of the entries are especially heartfelt, told from the perspective of the last member of a now extinct species, like Martha, the last surviving passenger pigeon, who died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Deeply moving and well researched, this text will educate and inspire in equal measure.