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An enchanting wee book to pick up and put down again, with a short chapter for each animal, plus beautiful illustrations. Lots of interesting and bizarre facts, though more from the history of human relations with the creatures covered than actual zoology. The 'vanishing treasure' of the subtitle expresses the sadness and anger that thrums throughout. I got this book as a physical book about nature that I could manage to read while grappling with my small daughter. She absolutely loved the folding cover and the pictures, to the extent that it was impossible to actually read while she was around. Still, we would look at it together, her tiny index finger pointing at the encircled golden creatures while I said their names 'lemurs', 'wolf', 'hermit crab', 'hare' (she strokes her head at this), 'seal', 'swift', 'Greenland shark'. A litany of delight and loss. My eyes prickle with tears at the realisation I am doing all this work to nurture in her a love of a natural world being ever degraded, of species that may well no longer exist by the time she comes into adulthood, and my heart breaks anew.

I'm a complete sucker for stories of inter-species companionship, especially with a single woman in a rural setting, so I was always going to enjoy this (even if the side of me more inclined to a hermeneutics of suspicion was screaming 'WITH THE EVIL TORIES' every time Dalton mentioned her job. It was interesting that she resisted a lot of the sentimental anthropomorphism that usually comes with this territory, encapsulated by not imposing a name on the hare. The otherness of the wild animal is maintained throughout, despite the love, care and gratitude she had for them shining through every page. It's the usual mix of memoir, cultural history and popular science that is so successful in creative nonfiction, and albeit clunky in parts (unsurprisingly since it's a debut). I'm emotionally invested enough not to look up any interviews etc as I don't want to know what happens beyond the pages of the book. A few days after finishing the book I was lucky enough to see a hare for the first time in years, and found I had a renewed appreciation for the beautiful golden figure leaping across a field.