All About Animals discussion

Do you have pet peeves about pet books you read? What are they?

I can't stand it when there's a bunch of mistakes in books, or lack of quotation marks. What about you?

My biggest pet peeve is when authors spell something incorrectly. Like when they are talking about horses and rodeo and they call it a "shoot" instead of a "chute." It drives me crazy! I also don't like it when they are writing something about animals and it's obvious they haven't done their research well. I love horse books, but they aren't always very realistic about how horses actually act.

My biggest ones are when authors are still using outdated facts about animals especially in children's books and when they present animal myths as facts.

My pet peeve is that so many animal books are sad, especially children's books. And so many children's' book do use outdated info. As a matter for fact, a few years ago I wrote my county library asking them to take a certain title off the shelves because it picture doing potentially dangerous things to dogs (letting out the front door alone, leash less. Feeding chocolate, etc.) The library refused to remove the book, saying parents can explain the dangers and because the author is well-known).

As for misspellings, books from reputable publishers have fewer than the fingers on one hand. I guess I am tired of being hoodwinked into reviewing self-published books that just aren't of the caliber I want. Instead of rating 3-5 stars, I have to rate 1-2. . . .

I never thought about that Skye about all the books out there showing someone feeding a dog chocolate for instance. Thanks for trying to change that and make a difference.

Skye wrote: "My pet peeve is that so many animal books are sad, especially children's books. And so many children's' book do use outdated info. As a matter for fact, a few years ago I wrote my county library as..."

When I first joined Goodreads I didn't review books or plan on ever reviewing them but then I came across some books that I felt some things needed to be said about them. While I later wrote reviews for some books I really enjoyed, these two books featured more negative reviews and each of them, from my point of view, only had one thing wrong with them.
The first book was a nonfiction book for training the more stubborn dog breeds. Right in the early part of the book it said that is was impossible and not even worth trying to train a Chihuahua once they became an adult. This really bugged me especially because I had been watching Victoria's Stillwell's show, It's Me or the Dog, where she helped teach several older Chihuahua's learn new tricks and used her training methods on Taco, who was four years old at the time, with complete success.
The other was a children's picture book in which the dog tells the readers that he and his boy share a special snack of chocolate daily. I know it was mentioned in another book in the same Series but in that one he at least said they did it secretly because dogs weren't supposed to eat chocolate. Though it would have been better if the author had told the readers why, because I had been a kid when I read it I wasn't sure which book of the series it was told in. However the picture book I read when I was in high school, (I had found it and because I loved the series I wanted to read it) and when I came across it here on Goodreads I felt that it's contents should be mentioned. I definitely felt in this case that could potentially benefit from my review so I left one everywhere I found the book listed.

My peeve is anthropomorphizing animals in stories, though the characters can be cute. For me, it is more interesting to read about animals acting as they really do. The writer must understand animal behavior, not just make them act like humans.