With its international and interdisciplinary sweep, this ground-breaking volume examines the ways that comics activate animals as icons and symbols in ways that no other art form possibly can. * Bart Beaty, Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada * If animals cannot speak, they have found in the authors of this fascinating volume the best advocates and interpreters. Animal comics are not a genre but a continent, of which the cartography is delivered here for the first time, in a truly cross-disciplinary perspective. * Thierry Groensteen, Cite internationale de la bande dessinee et de l'image, Angouleme, France * The essays offer a variety of critical frameworks for examining these comics; e.g., one essay provides a historical overview, with plenty of illustrative examples. Other contributors use a variety of theoretical lenses as they analyze these comics and even discuss animals in nonfiction comics. The final section (of four) should prove extremely helpful for teachers and future teachers: it offers strategies for using animal comics in various classroom settings, from a general education course to a young adult literature class. The variety of topics and texts represented here makes this collection useful across disciplines and interests ... The collection is a worthy complement to other books about graphic novels. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *