The struggles resulting from death and grief are presented beautifully in this novel - the focus on a young girls recovery and journey back to herself

(netgalley arc) 
-it's told in a beautiful verse 
-the cover is just wow 💛
-the story wasn't really a story.... It felt more like this girl's journey through grief with the taxidermy. 
-and that wasn't bad. I enjoyed it paired with what we were just studying about children going through the stages of grief. 
-I enjoyed all the descriptions and flashbacks and how some things weren't what they seemed.

The Art of Taxidermy is a book written in verse about death and grief. I found this very well done and engrossing. I hope to read more by this author.

Full review up at www.thebookishwiccan.wordpress.com 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a quick but captivating read. I was hooked from the first page and couldn't put it down. Bravo. Will definitely be purchasing this for my library.

This was one that did not click with me as much as I was hoping. When I came across The Art of Taxidermy on NetGalley, the title and cover art immediately intrigued me. Then, when I saw that it was written in verse, I immediately hit the request button. Verse novels are my absolute favorite, so it's a pretty guaranteed way to get me to read your book.

Sharon Kernot really is a great poet. Her words are beautiful and flow together so well, creating excellent imagery and emotion. The way she manages to explore the topic of grief in this novel was incredible. Lottie deals with the death of her mother in an honest and heartbreaking way that I was able to relate to after the loss of my nana.

One thing that bothered me about this story though was I didn't understand why it was being told. Yes, the words were beautiful, but I needed more of a driving force behind them. Lottie's story was incredibly interesting with her fascination with dead animals and the desire to preserve them, but there didn't seem to be a reason as to why Kernot decided to share it with us. This missing piece caused me to have an overall feeling of boredom throughout the time it took me to read the book. A lot of the poems also felt repetitious after a while.

I am glad that I took the time to read The Art of Taxidermy, and I definitely recommend it to anyone that enjoys novels in verse or the macabre. I was so glad to see that Lottie stayed true to who she was throughout the novel despite her aunt's best efforts. This is a very unique story, and I know the subject matter won't jive with everybody, but it was nice to see something out there for those of us that like things others find abnormal or gross. I'm definitely interested in reading more by Sharon Kernot, and I truly hope she continues to write poetry.

A thoughtful and haunting tale told in free verse. Lottie is a young girl struggling with the loss of her mother, and her sorrow translates into a peculiar interest in death. Much to the alarm and disgust of her family, she begins to collect dead things. Luckily I missed the "poetry" label when I received this book - the unusual format might have turned me off from reading it, and that would have been such a shame. Though not my favorite device, the flowing free verse suits the material – lending it a morose, dream-like quality. The Art of Taxidermy is a surprisingly lovely and tender story of grief and the preservation of life, love, and memories. It's a quick, memorable read.

A book written in verse that is fundamentally about Taxidermy, but is also about loss and grief, about friendship and being who you want to be despite what others say or feel. This book is relatively short, but it packs lots in and still manages to be written with such vivid description of the land and the animals.
I sped through this in a couple of sittings and was really immersed. Highly recommend

This book wasn't what I was expecting. I don't tend to read alot of poetry or verse but I still like the way this book read. It was easy to read and everything in the story made sense.
The story is very dark and shows how a girl who has suffered losses and uses the art of taxidermy to make her understand them. 
It's a very dark story focusing around an interesting concept. 
The book had lots of lovely verses that were written beautifully.

I wouldn't say this book was bad, because it wasn't, although personally I don't think it was for me.

This is very different in writing style to the novels I usually read, but the verse style suited it well. A story of grief and death and how we handle these emotions and move forward trying to make something useful of our experiences and feelings. I enjoyed it.

Macabre and uncanny, this is a novel that I would have adored as a weird, not-quite-cool-enough-to-be-goth teenager. Narrated in verse, it follows amateur-taxidermist Lottie as she grapples with grief, gender expectations and the ramifications of being German in post-WW2 Australia. 

The twists through the novel are navigated with care -- a young girl’s discovery of her family secrets and her own sense of self, rather than for shock-value or any sense of “gotcha”. It is an often heartbreaking foray into one family’s trauma and their responses to a multitude of loss. That said, Lottie is a rather self-absorbed narrator, and whilst that’s absolutely fitting for her characterisation and story, it does leave some things rather lacking: Aunt Hilda feels a little flat, relegated in the main to representing outdated gender roles, and Jeffrey feels woefully underused -- in a story about being an outsider, sidelining a displaced Aboriginal character feels somewhat uncomfortable, and Lottie’s white gaze is not so fully address as to ever not sit uneasily. 

The poetry is both beautiful and easy to read. Kernot’s description of nature in particular is evocative and precise, and she counterbalances a reverence for animals both living and dead with a scientific fascination that enthralled even this rather squeamish reader.

Overall, it’s a charming novel, and would serve as an ideal intro to verse narrative for middle/secondary school readers -- I’ll be putting a copy into my class library. 3.5 stars, rounded up for its quirky originality and lingering poetry.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this book. This one just fell short for me. It took me a while to realize that it was historical fiction (not necessarily a bad thing, since that wasn't the main point of the plot.) But the overall emotional arc of it just didn't work. This is mainly because the overall emotional arc of the book is more told than shown--Lottie spent more time talking about how taxidermy is a way of preserving/reviving life and less time showing us the grief that causes her to find joy in it.

The Art of Taxidermy is an evocative, effervescent and eviscerating short story, following the journey of a plucky young girl who confronts grief and sexism head on.

Australian author, Sharon Kernot, introduces the reader to bottlebrush trees whose “fallen flowers created perfect red circles like pools of blood.” These and other trees and natural landscapes provide the backdrop for a series of unfortunate creatures which become the focus for young Lottie’s growing obsession with death. Yet before her preservation skills can develop, her collections have an unfortunate habit of stinking out her bedroom.

“Taxidermist? I tried this new word, rolled it around in my mind and my mouth.”

The lyrical prose is written without speech marks, and is a fast-paced and moving read. Most readers will devour the book in about an hour, and I wished it were longer. But be warned, the words and emotions will linger long after, and a second reading will beckon.

“We studied the birds: sparrows, galahs, magpies. We watched the way they moved – their waddle, their flit, their hope, the stretch of their wings and the way they cocked their heads. I thought of my mangled lorikeet. It is a raggedy bird full of dead cotton.”

At its heart this is a hopeful and powerful story about dealing with grief by celebrating the beauty of death.

The Art of Taxidermy by Sharon Kernot will be published by The Text Publishing Company in August 2019.

I don't read a lot of poetry or verse, but the cover to this drew me in. The Art of Taxidermy is brief, but lets you have a real connection to a lost girl. Lottie is, and has lost. She finds that by keeping things, even dead things, she's able to be more. Her push back against a well-intentioned (but aren't they all well-intentioned?) aunt and a trying-his-best father are a brief, but intense read into the world of a unique girl

*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Although I'm quite squeamish, I have been fascinated by the art of taxidermy and the mindset behind such an artistic medium since reading English Animals last year. This beautiful cover instantly drew me in and when I learned it was written in verse, I just had to pick it up. 

I ended up reading this in one sitting. As it is written in verse, each section is quite short and there are illustrations such as those on the cover that break up the story also.

This is quite a sad read. A lot of Lottie's experiences and interests revolve around death and there are many instances of quite grotesque animal imagery throughout. However, I didn't find that off-putting at all. I enjoyed the way that the author used Lottie's interest in taxidermy to contrast with her aunt's societal expectations of her as a woman. The discussion surrounding the concept of taxidermy and whether it is morbid or wrong in some way were fascinating. On the other hand, I felt like I would have liked a little bit more from these discussions, particularly the idea of gender and what types of jobs are "proper" for a woman to be interested in compared to a man.

Overall, I liked this book. It was a quick read that I read in one sitting and I would definitely read something else by this author again in the future. If you like novels written in verse, I would recommend you give this a go.

The Art of Taxidermy is about a girl who is fascinated by dead animals, which may be because of the past deaths of her sister and mother. While I'm not particularly a fan of books in verse, since I think they lack the depth and description of an actual novel, I was fairly pleased with this story. The Art of Taxidermy had a good message that I could get even from the few words that are in this book. I loved the fact that the main character made a career out of her interest in the deceased at the end. I also thought it was satisfying that she came to terms with the deaths of two of her family members.

The Art of Taxidermy was a quick read, but it was worth my time. In fact, this is one of the better poetry novels I've gotten through. I recommend this book to those who like books in verse-- and even those who don't.

This novella written in free verse is about a family dealing with multiple deaths; the beauty of the prose is juxtaposed to the heartache and loss of this family’s lives.  The young daughter, Lottie, is twelve when we first meet her.  She has no one left in her immediate family but her father, although her Aunt Hilda helps to take care of her.  Lottie is obsessed with the dead creatures she finds in the Australian outback, and wants to be a taxidermist.  But it is not because she is morbid; rather, she sees taxidermy as a way to bring back the dead from the edge of decay.  “The revival and re-creation of something that has expired,” she maintains, “is an honour and a gift.”  She imagined, she said, all the dead “coming to life with the magic of taxidermy . . .”

Moreover, she muses:

“In those delicate
bones and teeth
were the elements
and minerals
of stars and stardust
and all of the people
I ever loved.”

Her Aunt Hilda tries to steer Lottie to pursuits “more appropriate” for girls.   But Lottie loves science even beyond the psychological balm that taxidermy provides her.  It is an uphill struggle to convince Lottie, but at least her father, a scientist himself, eventually supports her.  First, however, he has to get a handle on his own grief.

The language is often lovely and evocative, as with these passages:

“We arrived home beneath a sickle moon and faint suburban stars.” 

“Her body is bent, her arms thin.  Like a cubist rendition of herself, all squares, rectangles, triangles.” 

Evaluation:  This is a quiet little book, with its appeal sneaking up on you as you get caught up in the rhythms and images of natural life in Australia:

“Today the trees are full of flowers
and parrots.
Rainbow, musk and little lorikeets
hang from branches
like gaudy clowns,
squawking and chattering
as they strip the flowering gums . . . ”

Juxtaposed to “the bone-heavy ache of grief,” the blazing colors and warmth of the Outback that Lottie celebrates helps mitigate the darker colors of repeated loss, and lifts the mood of this gem of a book.

This is a very beautiful novel. It's a story about a young girl struggling with death and a fascination for taxidermy. The writing is very poetic and flowing, and makes for easy reading. This is a quick read, but will leave you thinking about it.

The book has pretty illustrations that add to the story. A small warning for if you have trouble with detailed descriptions of dead animals, it's not too intense in my opinion but if you're squeamish easily, this might not be a book for you.

The Art of Taxidermy is a verse novel about death, grief and how we cope with losing loved ones. After her mother's death the young protagonist Lottie tries to remedy her grief through collecting dead birds and small animals she finds by the roadside and in fields, trying to preserve them. She sees their death as beautiful, her aunt however sees her obsession as weird and unhealthy. We follow Lottie through her everyday life, watch her befriend a boy from her class (another outsider) and lose her companion Annie. There are surprising revelations and moments of deep, profound sadness in this book - a story of death and loss told through Lottie, her taxidermy and her family history (Germans who emigrated to Australia during World War II) before the bad things are eventually transformed into something beautiful. It was a pretty good read, although it felt a little underwhelming at times. The writing is poetic and almost dream-like, I'm not sure why it was written in verse though. Apart from a certain cadence to the words, I don't think the verse actually added much to the book.

Thank you to Text Publishing and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this book. 

Unfortunately this book was just not for me. I loved that it was written in verse, that's very unique these days. But the story line itself just did not captivate me. Charlotte was a dull character who dealt with grief and battled against her Aunt Hilda who wished she could be a normal girl. The details were another good point in this book as they painted wonderful pictures for the readers. I do believe others will enjoy this book and I wish it luck!

What instantly drew me to The Art Of Taxidermy was the unique poetic verse the author uses to create a beautiful tale of loss, and understanding. Within the passing of a loved one the main character unknowingly seeks understanding through her curiosity of wildlife, and the structural body. With the wide eyed innocence of a child oblivious as to why her actions are considered strange it resonated on a personal level. The supportive role her father portrayed was refreshing, and heartwarming as he subtly encourages his daughter, and her inquisitive nature into the world of science without ever for a second pausing to acknowledge the societal pressure.