We all love animals, even if sometimes its only from afar on TV or at a zoo. But many of us have felt a closer friendship and companionship with our friends in the animal world. We talk and react to them as if they really do understand us. Perhaps they do. In this volume Hardy, Thackeray, Carroll, DH Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, and many others share their words with our ears. The selections are:

• ‘Animal Poems - An Introduction
• ‘The Ant and The Cricket – Anonymous
• ‘Choosing Their Names’ - Thomas Hood
• ‘White Butterflies’ - Algernon Charles Swinburne
• ‘The Chickens’ – Anonymous
• ‘The Fly’ - William Blake
• ‘To a Cat’ - Algernon Charles Swinburne
• ‘Mrs Reynold's Cat’ - John Keats
• ‘Nicholas Nye’ - Walter De La Mare
• ‘The Cow’ - Robert Louis Stevenson
• ‘The Pelican Chorus’ - Edward Lear
• ‘Frog and Toad’ - Christina Rossetti
• ‘A Popular Personage at Home’ - Thomas Hardy
• ‘The City Mouse and the Country Mouse’ - Aesop