Editorial Content for No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity

A. Kendra Greene is a gifted writer. Her earlier work, THE MUSEUM OF WHALES YOU WILL NEVER SEE, captured my attention based on its title alone. The focus of that charming book is on the immense variety of unusual museums in Iceland, the country with the highest per-capita concentration of museums.

Likewise, the opening essay from which Greene draws the title of NO LESS STRANGE AND WONDERFUL hooked me right away. In it, she relates a brief pandemic-era anecdote, in which she convinced herself that she saw a tree calmly gliding down the street: "It was a young tree, slender and tall, not loping or thudding as you might imagine a tree to lumber, but gliding, just sailing along --- dare I say, a bit jaunty?" The explanation for this bizarre phenomenon is "no less strange or wonderful" than the workings of Greene's imagination.

"At a time when it can feel like avenues for curiosity and inquiry about the world are being threatened or barricaded, NO LESS STRANGE OR WONDERFUL is a powerful reminder of why the human tendency to wonder is essential and worth fighting to preserve."

That brief essay, in addition to serving as the source for the title, also sets the tone for the book as a whole. Throughout, Greene explores ways in which being curious about the world, learning more and thinking deeply about people, places and creatures, only reveals more and more wonders without end. Some of these discoveries are shared in similarly short essays. One, for example, "Hoax," is about her longtime belief that armadillos are never alive but only exist as roadkill. Another, "My Mother Greets the Inanimate," which at first glance is about a charming quirk of the author's mom, reveals itself to be about growing up, leaving home and changing familial roles.

Other essays are deliciously expansive, intricate in structure and capacious in their considerations. A particular standout is "Wild Chilean Baby Pears," a meditation on extinction, museums and kleptomania --- oh, and the U.S. bicentennial. Greene, who has spent much of her career as an artist or writer in residence at various zoos and museums, has a natural tendency to write about these places.

In "Megalonyx jeffersonii," Greene writes about how one of her duties involved dressing the museum's giant sloth model in various whimsical and seasonally appropriate costumes. And in "Captivated," she writes with great emotional effectiveness about a Chilean zoo where the dead animals --- mounted and placed in dioramas --- "lived" in more realistic habitats than did the live animals, who were often in cages or barely landscaped exhibits: "What a curious inversion this museum was: the most authentic habitat in the whole zoo and it was available only to carcasses. And yet how familiar the promise: to have in death what they never had in life."

I've been remiss in not mentioning until now that Greene --- a visual artist as well as a writer --- embellishes most of the essays with her own artwork. These include line drawings, photographs, botanical prints and even x-ray mammography images, all of which combine to make the experience of reading this collection truly exquisite.

It's worth noting that, although animals are a central concern throughout these essays, Greene doesn't just focus on the non-human world. Some of the pieces resemble fables or folktales. Others relate the harrowing aftermath of an ice storm or remark on her health, her love life, or even (in one particularly memorable essay) an urban legend of a Dallas-area Ebenezer Scrooge-for-hire at Christmas parties, which leads to an extended consideration of Dickens' Christmas tales, among (many) other matters. Without giving away too much, the closing essay, "People Lie to Giraffe," is a tender and very funny account of ways of relating to a child --- and, perhaps, how to retain a childlike sense of wonder.

At a time when it can feel like avenues for curiosity and inquiry about the world are being threatened or barricaded, NO LESS STRANGE OR WONDERFUL is a powerful reminder of why the human tendency to wonder is essential and worth fighting to preserve.