Wow! This was one hell of a book, absolutely fascinating. Blencowe shares his life long obsession of extinct animals with us and takes us with him around the world as he checks out the last places these animals were seen….and has a go at trying to spot one of the animals pretending to be extinct and claim the prize money for discovering it. The big names are here, Pinta Island Tortoise, The Great Auk and of course the mighty Dodo, also included are lesser known species, The Spectacled Cormorant, the beautiful Xerces Blue butterfly and my favourite the Huia. I first heard about the Huia in the movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople and it sent me on a google trip researching the bird, it was great to see the movie get a mention here.

One thing that this book shows is the human’s appetite for killing and the lack of care of other species, I knew that the Victorians would eat anything and wiped out whole groups of animals, what I didn’t know was just how brutal they were, the treatment of the Steller’s Sea Cow was horrible, so unnecessarily cruel and wasteful. Blencowe describes how other species have been wiped due to habitat lose, some just don’t stand a chance and whilst there is some hope as people become aware of what we are losing I don’t think it is enough as the decision makers don’t seem to care, the HS2 line in the UK is a good example of so much destruction so that people can get somewhere a little bit quicker. The subject matter is very dark, it could make the reader rather depressed, I certainly felt low at some points, luckily Blencowe brings his wonderful sense of humour and childlike wonder to his writing, who hasn’t as a grownup got distracted and had an ice cream melt all down their hand, Blencowe shares this with us and you can’t help sitting there with a massive grin on your face. One last interesting bit from the book is in the conclusion, in the making of this book Blencowe has travelled the world and he comes to terms with his impact on the environment, a nice little touch.


The book is full of wonderful little illustrations by Jade They which really do bring the animals to life, these illustrations mixed with Blencowe’s writing make this a stunning little book that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Blog Review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/02/26/gone-a-search-for-what-remains-of-the-worlds-extinct-creatures-by-michael-blencowe/